In this Thursday, April 16, 2015 photo provided by Robert MacFarlane, a raccoon climbs up a skyscraper in downtown Toronto. Social media was abuzz Thursday with the photo of the raccoon peering from between the metallic rungs of a crane 58 stories high. (Photo by Robert MacFarlane)

“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)

A woman spends her time outdoors to observe the ancient festival of Sizdeh Bedar, an annual public picnic day on the 13th day of the Iranian new year, at the Tochal mountainous area northern Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April, 2, 2017. Sizdeh Bedar, which comes from the Farsi words for “thirteen” and “day out”, is a legacy from Iran's pre-Islamic past that hard-liners in the Islamic Republic never managed to erase from calendars. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

A walrus kisses a visitor during a sea animal show at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, Monday, September 11, 2017. (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo)

A dramatic rise in owning exotic pets in China is fuelling global demand for threatened species. The growing trade in alligators, snakes, monkeys, crocodiles and spiders is directly linked to species loss in some of the world’s most threatened ecosystems. Here: A fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) is groomed in a pet store in central Beijing. Native to the Sahara in North Africa, the species became a popular pet after being depicted as a character in Disney’s 2016 animated movie Zootopia. Individuals can cost between $2,000–$3,000. (Photo by Sean Gallagher/The Guardian)

Human canvases modelling world famous artworks including Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Edvard Munch's The Scream take to the streets of London in a bid to mend Britain's disconnect with art on September 25, 2017. Award winning body paint artist Sarah Attwell was commissioned by online art platform Rise Art to show that great art is for everybody, following research that revealed 1 in 6 Brits have never set foot in an art gallery. (Photo by Imagewise Ltd/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

An elderly woman plays an accordion in Moscow, Russia on October 3, 2017. (Photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP Photo)

The first four finalists are selected during the 66th Miss Universe pageant at Planet Hollywood hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada on November 26, 2017. (Photo by Steve Marcus/Reuters)