A member of Korean Federation for Environmental Movement in a Santa Claus outfit attaches dumped cigarette butts at a cigarette butt Christmas tree in front of Korea Tobacco & Ginseng Corporation office in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, December 23, 2019. The environmental activist group called for a ban on the use of plastic for cigarette filters as part of efforts to protect the environment from toxic plastic pollution. (Photo by Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo)

Two zebras stand so close in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania. (Photo by Zhayynn James/Solent News)

A Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo joey with its mother at Sydney Zoo in Australia on January 22, 2021. The 28-week-old male joey, who is yet to be named, has only just begun to pop his head and shoulders out of his mum's pouch. (Photo by Taronga Zoo via Reuters)

This photo taken on April 4, 2021 shows migratory birds flying over a wetland near the Yalu River in Dandong, in China's northeastern Liaoning province. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

“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 wearing a burka walks through a bird market as she holds her child, in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 8, 2022. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear head-to-toe clothing in public – a sharp, hard-line pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and was bound to further complicate Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

Michael Pankratz’s intriguing works focus specifically on the feet of tarantulas – an appendage that many have perhaps never focused on. The extreme close-ups of tarantulas’ “paws” show fine, colourful hairs, and sharp claws. Here: Brachypelma albopilosum, foot detail. (Photo by Michael Pankratz/Caters News Agency)

Sеx worker Geraldine, wearing cat make-up, excitedly holds up a dress she is thinking of buying from a street vendor, so that her partner, sitting nearby to keep her company, can see it, as she waits for clients outside the Revolution subway station, in Mexico City, Saturday, March 13, 2021. According to Geraldine, 30, the pandemic has cut clients and increased risks to the sеx workers but has also brought out more assistance for them too, both from dedicated organizations such as the activist group Brigada Callejera or “The Street Brigade” and from individuals who have donated food or clothing. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)