Traditional dancers with their masks look on before their performance during “Nawa Durga Nach” Hindu dance festival in Bhaktapur on the outskirts of Kathmandu on March 28, 2024. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

A stray cat walks in front of a ballot box at a polling station for Turkish citizens living abroad, as part of the second round of the Turkish presidential election, at the Turkish Embassy in Cairo, Egypt on May 22, 2023. (Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

A girl watches the members of Nepali ethnic Newar community participating in “Jyapu Day” celebrations that marks the end of the harvest season, in Kathmandu on December 26, 2023. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

Military Personnel sing and dance during celebrations for Independence Day in Dakar on April 4, 2022. Senegal Celebrates its sixty second Independence Day after gaining independence from France in 1960. (Photo by John Wessels/AFP Photo)

People walk behind the Medusa head in the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, Turkey, 24 July 2022. The site has been restored by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and is now open for visitors again. The Byzantine structure was commissioned by Emperor Justinian and built in 532. The underground Basilica, also called Underground Cistern, is the largest well preserved cistern in Istanbul, which rests on a total of 336 columns. According to historical texts, more than 7,000 slaves were involved in the construction of the cistern. (Photo by Sedat Suna/EPA/EFE)

Canoeists are framed by the tail of a breaching whale in Antarctica in April 2023. The photographer, from California, writes: “It was probably a once-in-a-lifetime moment”. (Photo by Jiahong Zeng/Solent News)

Lake Baikal is the world's oldest lake, at 25 million years (possibly older), and deepest, averaging 744.4 metres (2,442 ft).

Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water.

The snow leopard (Panthera uncia syn. Uncia uncia) is a large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species because as of 2003, the size of the global population was estimated at 4,080-6,590 adults, of which fewer than 2,500 individuals may reproduce in the wild.