US based toy inventor Steve Casino, 48, has spent almost two years turning peanut shells into these tiny figures. He has made almost 100 of the tiny four-inch statuettes to date- including well-known stars like Elton John and Johnny Depp. The intricate designs can often take up to 20 hours to create. Steve has even turned his unusual passion into a business, selling privately commissioned peanut statuettes as gifts and wedding cake toppers. (Photo by Steve Casino)

A man watches Israeli Air Force planes fly over the Mediterranean Sea from a beach at Tel Aviv during an aerial show as part of celebrations for Israel's Independence Day to mark the 66th anniversary of the creation of the state, May 6, 2014. (Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters)

Smithsonian National Zoo biologist Leigh Pitsko releases a male lion cub for its swim test in the zoo habitat moat, in Washington May 6, 2014. Four, unnamed ten-week old lion cubs were tested today for their ability to swim and remove themselves from their zoo habitat moat. (Photo by Gary Cameron/Reuters)

A Russian daredevil has captured a vertigo-inducing selfie – while standing on top of a Dubai skyscraper. Nineteen-year-old Alexander Remnev scaled the Princess Tower – the worlds tallest residential building at 1,350ft – before getting his camera out to take these stomach-churning pictures. Photo: He leans on the very top of the tower as he takes this vertigo-inducing picture. (Photo by Alexander Remnev/Caters News)

“Dropping” is the work of Italian graphic artist Alberto Seveso. Seveso captured these amazing images or “fluid sculpture” with the use of high-speed photography while mixing ink with oil, as a tribute to the dripping technique of Jackson Pollock. Seveso works from his home town of Portoscuso, Italy creating cutting edge imagery for ad campaigns for companies such as Adobe, Sony, ESPN, Nikon and more. Sevese says of his work: “I don't consider myself as an artist, I'm just someone playing with software and creativity”... (Photo by Alberto Seveso)

View at one of the sculptures by Swiss artist H.R. Giger during the opening of the Ars Electronica 2013 exhibition “HR Giger. The Art of Biomechanics” in Linz, Austria, 04 September 2013. (Photo by EPA/RUBRA)

Do tears of joy look the same as ones of woe—or ones from chopping onions? In “The Topography of Tears,” the Los Angeles-based photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher explores the physical terrain of one hundred tears emitted during a range of emotional states and physical reactions. Using a Zeiss microscope with an attached digital camera, she captures the composition of tears enclosed in glass slides, magnified between 10x and 40x. “There are many factors that determine the look of each tear image, including the viscosity of the tear, the chemistry of the weeper, the settings of the microscope, and the way I process the images afterwards,” she says.

“Just hanging out”. As full autumn hits the valley of Hallingdal in Norway, this bear chills out in a tree which seems to barely cover its weight. Photo location: Flå, Hallingdal, Norway. (Photo and caption by Jorgen Tharaldsen/National Geographic Photo Contest)