A mouse rides on the back of a frog in floodwaters in the northern Indian city Lucknow June 30, 2006. (Photo by Pawan Kumar/Reuters)

Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

This photo taken on October 8, 2017 shows dancers posing in formation to celebrate the upcoming Party Congress, in Rongan in China' s southern Guangxi region. China will convene its 19 th Party Congress on October 18, state media said, a key meeting held every five years where President Xi Jinping is expected to receive a second term as the ruling Communist Party' s top leader. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

A relative performs rituals for a man who died of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), before his cremation at a crematorium in New Delhi, India, November 19, 2020. (Photo by Danish Siddiqui/Reuters)

This photo taken on September 1, 2023 shows a one-day-old female Sumatran elephant by her 41-year-old mother elephant named Lisa at the Elephant Flying Squad camp in the Tesso Nilo National Park in Pelalawan, Sumatra. (Photo by Wahyudi/AFP Photo)

Brazil's team performs in the artistic swimming acrobatic routine final at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, Friday, November 3, 2023. (Photo by Matias Delacroix/AP Photo)

A man uses an umbrella for shade as he carries a dismantled car on a cycle rickshaw to a scrapyard on a hot weather day on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, May 19, 2022. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

School children wear face masks as they take part in an awareness rally against the use of tobacco on “World No Tobacco Day” in Kolkata on May 31, 2022. (Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP Photo)