A reveller of a street party known as blocos, dances during a protest against restrictions by city officials in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. City Hall has banned the street parties during Carnival celebrations, which were delayed by almost two months due to the pandemic. (Photo by Silvia Izquierdo/AP Photo)

A competition, now in its 43rd year, dedicated to showcasing the beautiful and bizarre as seen under a light microscope attracted over 2,000 entries from 88 countries. Here: Honorable Mention by Emre Can Alagöz, Istanbul, Turkey: The eyes of a jumping spider, magnified 6x. (Photo by Emre Can Alagöz/2017 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition)

Matilda Thurston 10, enjoys a warm day at Hathersage Swimming Pool in Hathersage on April 27, 2025. A mini heatwave is set to hit parts of the UK with temperatures reaching 27 degrees next week. (Photo by Ioannis Alexopoulos/London News Pictures)

Behaviour: Mammals category. Giant Gathering by Tony Wu, USA. Dozens of sperm whales mingled noisily off Sri Lanka’s northeast coast, stacked as far down as Tony could see. This was a congregation of dozens of social units, like a gathering of the clans. Aggregations like this could be a critical part of the whales’ rich social lives but are rarely reported. Some two thirds of the population was wiped out before commercial whaling was banned in 1986. This kind of major gathering could be “a sign that populations are recovering”, says Tony. (Photo by Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017)

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 model poses backstage ahead of the NLP show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia 2014 at Carriageworks on April 7, 2014 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

A new book published by the UK Natural History Museum showcases some of the most memorable underwater photographs taken over the last few decades in its annual wildlife photographer of the year competition. Here: Giant gathering by Tony Wu. “The first indication that something extraordinary was going on were the blows, huge numbers of them – the exhalations of huge numbers of whales. Entering the water, the photographer witnessed an extraordinary scene”. (Photo by Tony Wu/Unforgettable Underwater Photography/NHM)

Models clad in costumes of video game charactors pose at a game booth during the Tokyo Game Show 2016 in Chiba, suburb of Tokyo, on September 15, 2016. Sony took centre stage at the annual four-day event, with its virtual reality headset ready to hit store shelves for the Christmas shopping season. (Photo by Toru Yamanaka/AFP Photo)