Volunteers use flour to clean birds following an oil spill caused by an incident involving two tankers damaged in a storm in the Kerch Strait, in the village of Vityazevo near the Black Sea resort of Anapa, Russia on December 20, 2024. (Photo by Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters)

The Godson family had faced eviction over neighbours' complaints about the birds squawking and swearing. Now, after the family were targeted in a drive-by smoke-bomb attack over the birds they have upped and moved 200 miles from Hemel Hempstead, Herts, to Minehead, Somerset. And their pets join in their new idyllic coastal life – by walking along the beach with them on May 9, 2023. (Photo by Neil Hope/The Sun)

As an airliner prepares to land, a bird takes off at the Gravelly Point park near Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va. on December 23, 2018. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Climate change activists dressed up as black birds protest in St. Ives, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Cornwall, Britain, June 11, 2021. (Photo by Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

Alexandra Crockett, a musician and jewelry designer, has been present and active in the metal community since the age of 15 and is currently a doctoral student in the Bay Area. Beginning her idea for the book by doing promotional photos for bands and friends she would cat-sit for, she found an interesting dynamic between men in the metal scene and their cats. The idea for the book formed around giving accolades to local musicians and artists in the metal scene, while also bringing to light no-kill shelters and their importance for animal rights.

In this photo taken Sunday, October 5, 2014, a library official shows a 13th-century German prayer book containing the earliest evidence of the Yiddish language, at Israel's National Library in Jerusalem. This week, Israel's National Library gave The Associated Press a rare peek at a selection of rare historical manuscripts in its collection. (Photo by Sebastian Scheiner/AP Photo)

Freelance illustrator and graphic designer Aurélien Police was born in France in 1978. He has already worked and is currently working on projects for the music and publishing industries (book covers, CD design, children book illustrations). He uses computer as melting pot to mix up all sorts of raw materials, erasing the frontiers between all possible media so as to provide his pictures with a graphic finishing of his own. Flirting with various themes -often associated with fantasy, detective or supernatural- allows him to translate in pictures his own personal vision of those genres.