“Tardigrades (commonly known as waterbears or moss piglets) are small, water-dwelling, segmented animals with eight legs. Tardigrades were first discovered in 1773 by Johann August Ephraim Goeze, who called them kleiner Wasserbär, meaning “little water bear” in German. The name Tardigrada means “slow walker” and was given by Lazzaro Spallanzani in 1777. The name water bear comes from the way they walk, reminiscent of a bear's gait. The biggest adults may reach a body length of 1.5 millimetres (0.059 in), the smallest below 0.1 mm. Freshly hatched tardigrades may be smaller than 0.05 mm”. – Wikipedia. Photo: Tardigrades. (Photo by SPL/East News)

“Romantic”. A brown bear in Martinselkonen, Finland. (Photo by Valtteri Mulkahainen/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards)

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)

People play with toy guns outside a bar at night, almost a year after the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, Hubei province, China on December 11, 2020. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

US M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) is launched as journalists film during a military exercise in Capas, Tarlac province, Philippines, 13 October 2022. The Philippines hosted simultaneous combat drills with the United States, South Korea, and Japan to improve interoperability in times of conflict. (Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA/EFE)

A 16-meter-high snowman is nearly completed by the Songhua River in Harbin City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on December 7, 2022. (Photo by Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Members of the Colombian Navy stand guard on top of a seized submarine built by drug smugglers in a makeshift shipyard in Timbiqui, department of Cauca February 14, 2011. Colombian authorities said the submersible craft was to be used to transport 8 tons of cocaine illegally into Mexico. (Photo by Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters)