A devotee participates in Bonalu festival in Hyderabad, India, Thursday, June 22, 2023. Bonalu is a month-long Hindu folk festival of the Telangana region dedicated to Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. (Photo by Mahesh Kumar A./AP Photo)

Thailand’s Surasak Waenwiset tries a shot as Hungary’s Marcell Fenyvesi stands nearby, during their Beach Handball Men’s Tournament match in Tecnopolis Park, during the Youth Olympic Summer Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina on October 9, 2018. (Photo by Florian Eisele/AP Photo)

Two zebras stand so close in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania. (Photo by Zhayynn James/Solent News)

The Wildscreen festival is the world’s biggest celebration of screen-based natural history storytelling which takes place every two years in Bristol. Here: “Walrus in Midnight Sun”. Walrus feed mostly on bivalves in productive, shallow and often sandy habitats in the Arctic. This individual, though, arrived on a beach outside Tromsø, northern Norway, and found comfort on a stranded dead sperm whale. After two weeks he approached Audun, and only half a metre away he stretched his tusk forward and touched his hand gently. “This was one of the most memorable moments of my life”, Rikardsen says. He named the 500kg male Buddy. After two months, the dead whale was decomposed and Buddy suddenly disappeared. (Photo by Audun Rikardsen/Wildscreen 2016)

Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

This photo taken on October 8, 2017 shows dancers posing in formation to celebrate the upcoming Party Congress, in Rongan in China' s southern Guangxi region. China will convene its 19 th Party Congress on October 18, state media said, a key meeting held every five years where President Xi Jinping is expected to receive a second term as the ruling Communist Party' s top leader. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Plumes of smoke rise from the snow covered volcano Villarrica, in Pucon, Chile on December 7, 2023. (Photo by Cristobal Saavedra Escobar/Reuters)

Sunrise over the River Thames and Tower Bridge in London today morning on January 28, 2024. It has been forecast that Sahara dust will be in the atmosphere. (Photo by Alister Gooding/Picture Exclusive)