In this October 14, 2013 photo, ecology professor Ricardo Freitas catches a broad-snouted caiman to examine, then release back into the water channel in the affluent Recreio dos Bandeirantes suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Caimans are like tanks, a very old species with a remarkable capacity for renovation that allows them to survive under extreme conditions where others couldn't, said Freitas, who runs the Instituto Jacare, or the Caiman Institute, which aims to protect the reptiles. (Photo by Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

David Yeo’s photography places naturally small species alongside animals that have been selectively bred to be tiny and cute. Here: “The most difficult aspect of this shoot was to get each African pygmy dormouse – also known as micro squirrels – on to a separate camera. Once in place, they needed to remain still long enough to get them both in the frame and looking at me. Often solitary, they naturally wanted to move away”. (Photo by David Yeo/Leica Studio Mayfair/The Guardian)

A picture made available on 07 March 2016 shows visitors petting and holding a Fennec fox, native to the Sahara, in the petting room at the Little Zoo Cafe, a business built to capitalize on Thais' love for exotic animals, and food, on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand, 05 March 2016. The cafe boasts Fennec foxes, Meerkat, native to parts of Africa, Silver Fox, Raccoon and Chinchillas, along with a menu of Thai food and Cheesecake, among other sweet deserts. Nature is a faraway fantasy in the bustling exhaust-filled cement city of Bangkok, fuelling a demand to own and be close to exotic pets. The trend to be near to a species that was once wild, in a city environment, far from the natural setting, has drawn criticism but continues to grow. (Photo by Barbara Walton/EPA)

A Puffin returns to it's nest with a beak full of sand eels on June 25, 2011 on Inner Farne, England. The Farne Islands, which are run by the National Trust, are situated two to three miles off the Northumberland coastline. The archipeligo of 16-28 separate islands (depending on the tide) make the summer home to approximately 100,000 pairs of breeding seabirds including around 36,000 Puffins, 32,000 Guillemots and 2,000 pairs of Arctic Terns. The species of birds which nest in internationally important numbers include Shag, Sandwich Tern and Arctic Tern. The coastline around The Farnes are also the breeding ground to one of Europe's largest Grey Seal colonies with around 4,000 adults giving birth to 1500 pups every year. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Tatyana Abramova, 33, plays with her home fox Plombir at her countryside house outside Siberian city of Novosibirsk on September 12, 2020. The official start of the Soviet experiment to better understand the domestication of animals by humans began in 1959, and was initiated by geneticists Dmitri Beliaiev and Lioudmila Trout on a farm in Akademgorodok, the scientific center of excellence in Siberia. Their primary objective was to domesticate foxes, to understand how the ancestor of wolves, another canine, evolved into a loyal and loving dog. And understand what this domestication tells us about the genetic evolution of species. (Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP Photo)

Galapagos – Rocking the Cradle: Four major ocean currents converge along the Galapagos archipelago, creating the conditions for an extraordinary diversity of animal life, April 25, 2016. The islands are home to at least 7,000 flora and fauna species, of which 97 percent of the reptiles, 80 percent of the land birds, 50 percent of the insects and 30 percent of the plants are endemic. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak for National Geographic/World Press Photo)

Global wildlife populations will decline by 67% by 2020 unless urgent action is taken to reduce human impact on species and ecosystems, warns the biennial Living Planet Index report from WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) and ZSL (Zoological Society of London). From elephants to eels, here are some of the wildlife populations most affected by human activity. Here: The maned wolf is among the large mammals in the Brazilian Cerrado that are threatened by the increasing conversion of grasslands into farmland for grazing and growing crops. (Photo by Ben Cranke/Nature Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo)

Photographer Gregg Segal travelled the world to document children and the food they eat in a week. Partly inspired by the increasing problems of childhood obesity, he tracked traditional regional diets as yet unaffected by globalisation, and ironically, found that the healthiest diets were often eaten by the least well off. (Photo by Gregg Segal/The Guardian)