These poignant portraits look to shine awareness on the plight of some of the world’s most endangered ecosystems and species of wildlife. The images combine animals, art and celebrity, with Asia's top models posing with the likes of rhinos, giraffes, leopards and marine life. Here: Mikki Yao with an Asian Elephant. (Photo by Sean Lee-Davies/Caters News)

A resident looks at a wildfire in Vina del Mar, Chile, March 12, 2017. Forest fires are a regular feature of Chile's hot, arid summers, but a nearly decade-long drought combined with historically high temperatures have created tinder-like conditions in the nation's central regions. (Photo by Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters)

Venus Isabelle Palermo (born 8 February 1997), better known as VenusAngelic, is a Swiss-born YouTube personality, known for her doll-like appearance and fashion sense. Her YouTube channel has more than 120 million views, nearly 800,000 subscribers and 160 uploaded videos.

Artist Julien “Seth” Malland aka Seth Globepainter has become known around the world for his vibrant murals of people, most frequently children, who appear to be sucked into colorful rainbow-like voids. The figures are usually facing away from the viewer, their attention completely swallowed by pools of dripping color revealed behind drab, urban facades.

Zappa, a toothless 15-year-old Italian greyhound that looks surprisingly like Sid the Sloth from the animated movie Ice Age, is redefining dog beauty. Owners Sadie and Rosalie Millen, of Pewaukee, Wisconsin, say that Zappa started sticking her tongue out a few years ago when she lost her teeth.

At the end of rice harvesting season, the folks of the Kagawa and Niigata Prefectures in Japan hold a straw festival to celebrate the abundance of the harvest. Dried straws cover wooden frames to form larger-than-life sculptures from animals like sharks and gorillas to vessels such as ships and tanks. The family-friendly event invites visitors of all ages to engage, interact, and play on the enormous structures.

Susanna Bauer was born in 1969 in Bavaria, Germany. She has lived in England since 1996. Susanna has worked for the television and film industry for over 16 years, making objects like King Arthur’s chalice, cheeses for Wallace and Gromit, miniature robots, spaceships and buildings.

It might have been foggy in the Willamette Valley, but Cerridwen Martin was able to revel in a view of the top of the clouds from the summit of Spencer Butte in Eugene, Ore., on Tuesday, December 16, 2014. Martin was joined by Joe Martinson, right, for the 1.1 mile trek. Fog shrouded much of the city for most of the day. (Photo by Andy Nelson/AP Photo/The Register-Guard)