Shemika Charles limbos under her car at Niagara Falls State Park on May 28, 2015 in Buffalo, New York. A world record holding limbo queen thinks she has become the first person to shimmy under a car. Shemika Charles amazed herself and onlookers when she bent over backwards to get underneath the SUV earlier this week. The supple 22-year-old entered the record books in 2010 when she limboed down to an incredible eight and a half inches – the height of a beer bottle. She trains for up to four hours a day to keep her body in peak condition and now travels around America performing with her family. However, regular performances put an incredible strain on her body and she sees a chiropractor once a week to have her hips realigned. Her mother was also a successful limbo dancer in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago but had to give up due to injury. (Photo by Ruaridh Connellan/Barcroft USA)

A golden huddle by Minqiang Lu, China. Two females and a male golden snub-nosed monkey huddle together to keep warm in the extreme cold. Threatened by forest loss and fragmentation, this endangered species is confined to central China. Restricted to living high up in the temperate forests, these monkeys – here in the Qinling mountains in Shaanxi province – feed mostly in the trees, on leaves, bark, buds and lichen. In heavy wind and snow, Minqiang walked up the mountain carrying his equipment. He stayed for half an hour in temperatures of –10C opposite the tree where the group was huddled before achieving this eye-level composition. (Photo by Minqiang Lu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

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)

Bloodthirsty by Thomas P. Peschak, Germany/South Africa — winner, Behaviour: birds. When rations run short on Wolf Island, in the remote northern Galápagos, the sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies and other large birds. The finches rely on a scant diet of seeds and insects, which regularly dries up, so they drink blood to survive. ‘I’ve seen more than half a dozen finches drinking from a single Nazca booby,’ says Tom. Rather than leave their nests the boobies tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

A boy plays at a flooded street in front of a passing bus as tropical storm Fung-Wong battered the Philippine capital Manila September 19, 2014. Heavy rain in the Philippine capital, Manila, caused flooding in many areas on Friday, shutting schools, government offices and financial markets as a tropical storm made landfall to the north. Thousands of residents in low-lying areas were moved to higher ground, officials said, as flood waters rose quickly after the equivalent of half a month's usual rain fell in six hours. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)

Pine trees are seen after a forest fire near Sao Pedro do Sul, Portugal August 14, 2016. Deadly wildfires raging for two weeks in Portugal have destroyed a wooded area the size of 100,000 soccer fields, and the small Iberian nation alone accounts for half of all forests burned in the European Union this year. (Photo by Rafael Marchante/Reuters)

Young Swiss photographer Cyril Porchet’s final year show included this awesome series of the most opulent Baroque church altars he could find in Spain, Austria and Germany. His intention was to explore the seductive power of display. What is extraordinary is how much you lose all sense of perspective and depth, such is the overabundance of detail. I like how the odd feature confuses all the more; like the red rope of the ornamental light in the image below for instance which neatly splices the image in half. I could pore over these for hours and hours.

Split Apple Rock is a geological rock formation in The Tasman Bay off the northern coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Made of granite, it is in the shape of an apple which has been cut in half. It is a popular tourist attraction in the waters of the Tasman Sea approximately 50 metres off the coast between Kaiteriteri and Marahau. The rock sits in shallow water at low tide and is accessible by wading. It is also a point of interest for the many tourist boats and pleasure craft which operate along the shores of the Abel Tasman National Park. The cleft to produce two sides of the 'apple' was a natural occurrence. It is unknown when this happened and therefore the cleaving of the rock has attracted mythological explanations.