This is the moment a diver appears to shake hands with a giant 52ft whale. The divers were just metres away when one humpback whale – which weighs 36,000kg – extends its giant flipper in a peaceful manner. (Photo by Masa Ushioda/SeaPics/Solent News & Photo Agency)

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)

Cotswold gamekeeper shoots amazing pictures of British wildlife – without the aid of long lenses and elaborate techniques. The photos may look like they have been shot from miles away – but amazingly Adam Tatlow is actually just feet away from his wild subjects. Photo: Young fawn shelters in the wood. He is so at one with nature that he knows how to call animals to him, and often gets within 30ft of them. (Photo by Adam Tatlow/BNPS)

An arrow-head discovered in 2006 by Archaeologists of the University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit, is displayed by one of the team uncovering Bronze Age wooden houses, preserved in silt, from a quarry near Peterborough, Britain, January 12, 2016. Archaeologists said on Tuesday they had discovered what were believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain, providing an extraordinary insight into prehistoric life from 3,000 years ago. (Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters)

A hand out picture released by Queensland police on November 7, 2016 shows a police officer taking care of a baby koala in Brisbane Australian police made one of their more unusual finds when they uncovered a baby koala hidden in the bag of a woman they stopped in the street. (Photo by AFP Photo/Queensland Police)

An alert-looking Maine Coon during the Grand Prix Royal Canin cat exhibition in Moscow, Russia on December 4, 2016. The breed’s origin is unknown, but one legend claims it is descended from cats brought to the US by an English seafarer called Captain Coon. (Photo by Dmitry Serebryakov/TASS)

Residents watch the forest burn in Portezuelo, Chile, Sunday, January 29, 2017. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has announced that the country will continue with its various measures to deal with wild fires, one of the biggest natural disasters in the country for decades, according to a government report released on Sunday. (Photo by Esteban Felix/AP Photo)

The Tree Projects team spent 67 days documenting one eucalyptus regnans in the Styx valley of Tasmania. Using a combination of tree-climbing and elaborate arboreal rigging techniques, they produced an intimate portrait from an impossible perspective of one of the world’s largest individual flowering trees, which goes by several common names. These photos document the process that resulted in an extraordinary ultra high-definition photograph. Here: Haley nears the top of the tree. (Photo by Steven Pearce/The Tree Projects/The Guardian)