First lady Michelle Obama (R), joined by daughters Sasha Obama (C) and Malia Obama, is presented with the official White House Christmas Tree on November 25, 2011 in Washington, DC. The tree, a 19-foot-tall balsam fir, was grown on Schroeder's Forevergreens farm near Neshkoro, Wisconsin. (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

Macaque monkeys crowd together in their cage at a monkey farm on February 3, 2016 in Xinye county, Henan province, China. The area boasts a centuries-long and lucrative history of raising and training monkeys for performance. In Xinye, villagers are seeing an increase in business with the lunar calendar's “Year of the Monkey”. Farmers say most of the monkeys are bred and raised for domestic zoos, circuses, and performing groups, but add that some are also sold for medical research in China and the United States. Despite the popularity of the tradition, critics contend the training methods and conditions constitute animal cruelty. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/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)

A moon bear rests in a pool inside an enclosure at the Vietnam bear rescue centre, in Tam Dao national park, Vinh Phuc, Vietnam, 09 July 2019. The center is operated by international organization Animals Asia. There are currently 184 bears living at the the Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre. It is estimated that there are less than a few hundred bears left in the wild in Vietnam. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural development, around 600 bears are still being kept on farms. In Vietnam, Animals Asia has rescued a total of 209 sun bears and moon bears. (Photo by Minh Hoang/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A tiger jumps while being trained at the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, Thailand, February 25, 2016. Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple, dogged for years by talk that it supplies the black market and mistreats its animals, is fighting to keep the big cats after wildlife authorities rejected a bid to extend a zoo licence that expired in 2013. The Buddhist temple, home to more than 100 tigers, has been investigated for suspected links to wildlife trafficking and wildlife activists have accused it of illegal breeding of the animals. Thai wildlife authorities have sent ten of the temple's tigers to a wildlife sanctuary. But the temple, which bills itself as a wildlife sanctuary, has denied links to illegal trafficking, and wants to hold on to its tigers. (Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters)

The National Geographic Photo Ark is a travelling exhibition of photographer Joel Sartore’s quest to create a photo archive of biodiversity around the world. So far, Sartore has captured studio portraits of more than 6,000 species – a number that he hopes to double. On 1 July, the ark will open at Melbourne zoo – the first time it has been exhibited in the southern hemisphere. More than 50 portraits will be on display, including many of Australian endangered animals being protected by programs at the zoo itself. These captions have been edited from text supplied by Melbourne zoo. Here: Barking owl. (Photo by Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark/The Guardian)

Created by artist and unassuming local celebrity, Keith Jennings, the first tree spirit arrived on St. Simons Island in 1982. The old story goes that Keith negotiated his way out of a bar tab, hence, a tree priestess was born behind Murphy’s Tavern, on a blurry Saturday morning. In his own words, however, Keith states that his first tree spirit was created in the back yard of a place called, “The Animal Farm”. Either way, Keith Jennings has been known to cut the rug around here, no matter how you slice it.

Most of people who have visited Bali have seen the cockfighting popular among the locals. A little-known but no less ardent hobby among Bali’s farming community is cricket fighting, or mejangkrikang. The insects face off inside bamboo tubes known as bumbung, and bets are placed on the bouts, which typically last two minutes. Here: a cricket breeder shows his two adult fighter crickets on a bamboo tubes called Bumbung. (Photo by A. A. Gde Agung/JG Photo)