Budgies feed on seeds from a local visitor's hands at Ocean Park in metro Manila, Philippines September 10, 2016. (Photo by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

Yalena Leuliette, 7, of Greenbelt, Md., throws seeds from a cattail plant up in the air as she plays while visiting the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in northeast Washington, on Sunday, August 9, 2015. Leuliette visits the public garden with her parents a few times a year. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)

In this photo taken Wednesday, December 5, 2018, a woman who scavenges recyclable materials from garbage for a living is seen through a cloud of smoke from burning trash, surrounded by Marabou storks who feed on the garbage, at the dump in the Dandora slum of Nairobi, Kenya. As the world meets again to tackle the growing threat of climate change, how the continent tackles the growing solid waste produced by its more than 1.2 billion residents, many of them eager consumers in growing economies, is a major question in the fight against climate change. (Photo by Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

Bloodthirsty by Thomas P. Peschak, Germany/South Africa — winner, Behaviour: birds. When rations run short on Wolf Island, in the remote northern Galápagos, the sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies and other large birds. The finches rely on a scant diet of seeds and insects, which regularly dries up, so they drink blood to survive. ‘I’ve seen more than half a dozen finches drinking from a single Nazca booby,’ says Tom. Rather than leave their nests the boobies tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

A woman poses for a photo next to lotus flowers in West lake in Hanoi, Vietnam, 09 June 2025.. Lotus flowers bloom from late May to August in Vietnam and are commonly found growing in the muddy waters of lakes and ponds across the country. (Photo by Luong Thai Linh/EPA)

Yes this is not a real dragon’s skull but it is still pretty creepy. This weird little plant is called a Snapdragon or Dragon flower or, if you want to sound even smarter, The Antirrhinum. Once the flower has died, the seed pod begins to look like the skulls you see here. Apart from being creepy as hell and alleged protectors of the garden, if you wore this about your body you would appear to be more “fascinating and gracious”. Though I imagine if anyone actually did find this on you, fascinating and gracious are not the only things they will think about you.