A model, Mousumi Das wearing a traditional Indian saree and holding a Clay face of the Durga idol poses for an Agomoni Concept photoshoot at the Artist hub Kumortuli in Kolkata on August 23, 2025. (Photo by ZUMAPRESS.com/The Mega Agency)

Children in Hiroshima, Japan, wearing masks to combat the odour of death after the city was destroyed by the first atom bomb. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1945

The claws are out for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin – as cats now able to use a model of him as a scratching post. And moggies can also maul at Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose face also features on the new cat toys which are 1.5ft tall and cost £4,500. They are made from hessian rope, and 3D-printed faces are then attached to the posts, before they are handpainted. The toys took a team of artists 200 hours to finish. (Photo by The Pussycat Riot)

Snorkellers approach an adult manatee at Three Sisters Spring, Crystal River, Florida. You might imagine that coming face to face with one of these enormous underwater mammals would cause some concern. However, the likelihood is that the rotund creature just wants you to scratch its belly while it floats around happily, as world-renowned underwater photographer Alex Mustard discovered. (Photo by Alexander Mustard/Barcroft Media)

“Asaro from the Eastern Highlands”. The mudmen could not cover their faces with mud because the people of Papua New Guinea thought that the mud from the Asaro river was poisonous. So instead of covering their faces with this alleged poison, they made masks from pebbles that they heated and water from the waterfall, with unusual designs such as long or very short ears either going down to the chin or sticking up at the top, long joined eyebrows attached to the top of the ears, horns and sideways mouths. (Photo and caption by Jimmy Nelson)

The Leshan Giant Buddha, a 71-metre tall stone statue, is carved out of a cliff face in the southern part of Sichuan province in China. (Photo by Suchet Suwanmongkol/500px)

People watch participants, whose faces are painted as popular Mexican figure “Catrina”, during the annual Catrina Fest, part of Day of the Dead celebrations, in Mexico City, Mexico, November 2, 2016. (Photo by Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

A woman wearing a face mask and holding a parasol stands along a street in the central business district in Beijing, Thursday, July 7, 2022. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)