Sea lion “Jay” paints a Chinese character reading “the Serpent” at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium in Yokohama, suburban Tokyo on January 3, 2013. The event, marking the forthcoming Chinese lunar calender year of the snake was held as part of a New Year's attraction. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)

Two Herens cows lock horns during the qualification round of the annual “Battle of the Queens” cow fight finals in Aproz, in the western Alpine canton of Valais May 5, 2013. Each year when taken to the alpine pastures, the cows test their strength and fight for the herd's leadership. The competition continues until a new queen has forced all the other cows to retreat. (Photo by Valentin Flauraud/Reuters)

Young female Ibex on the fork of Disteis (2,200 m), near the top of the Jof di Montasio (Friuli, Italy). (Photo by Stefano Zocca)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

A fledgling solar system containing deep within it enough water vapor to fill all the oceans on Earth five times, located in our Milky Way galaxy about 1,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. (Photo by Reuters/NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A woman, wearing a traditional Sevillana dress, performs as she asks for alms in downtown Malaga, Spain, April 28, 2016. (Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)

A hippopotamus performs during a show at the circus in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia, July 7, 2016. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A tourist poses on the glass-bottom bridge at Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon on August 20, 2016 in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province of China. The Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon's glass-bottomed bridge welcame its trial operation on Saturday and about 8,000 tourists crowded to view the grand glass bridge. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)