A five-week-old orphaned Southern Sea Otter pup rests on a rubber mat after arriving at the Shedd Aquarium's Abbott Oceanarium in Chicago, Illinois October 28, 2014 in this handout photo provided to Reuters on November 5, 2014. The stranded pup was found on September 30 on Coastways Beach in California and was rescued the next day to be brought back to health at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Southern sea otters were listed as “threatened” under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1977. (Photo by Brenna Hernandez/Reuters/Shedd Aquarium)

Earlier this year, Belgian film-maker and artist Vincent Bal stumbled upon an uncanny resemblance to an elephant in the shadow of his tea cup. This gave him the idea for Shadowology, a series of doodles that interact with the shadows of simple, everyday objects: a banknote, some ice cubes and a flower, for example, can turn into a church, a woman and a hippy. “I draw a few lines and I get my image. It’s really the shadows that inspire me”, Bal says. Here: “Stonedog”. (Photo by Vincent Bal/The Guardian)

Born with a rare condition, the artist has chronicled her life in portraits – capturing everything from her tattooed prosthetics to the tentacled creature she stitched together on the shores of Naoshima. Here: Ophelia (2013). From a series of photos of imagined women exhibited at the 2013 Aichi Triennale. Here, Katayama invokes Hamlet’s tragic heroine, after the painting by British pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais. (Photo by Mari Katayama/The Guardian)

Forest guards chase away a rhino that strayed into a residential area after floods forced animals to escape the Kaziranga National park in Nagaon district, in the northeastern state of Assam, August 15, 2017. (Photo by Anuwar Hazarika/Reuters)

Alaa Shabat lives with her six children in a tent erected inside the Austrian cemetery in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on November 13, 2025, after her husband became ill and unable to work. (Photo by Tariq Mohammad/APAImages/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Winner of the National Park Foundation's photo contest; Honorable Mention: Fan Favorite. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. Three friends enjoy sunrise over the Grand Canyon. (Photo by Peter Blanchard)

A Goat is displayed on a stage for animal breeders and collectors during a rare levant goat auction and exhibition on April, 27, 2018, in Amman, Jordan. Animal breeders participants came from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Palestine to bid on rare goats at the Jrdanian breeder Yahya Abu Jaber near the Jordanian capital. (Photo by Salah Malkawi/Getty Images)

A displaced Palestinian child plays amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on November 14, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)