Open jaws of a Great White Shark Carcharodon Carcharias, South Africa. (Photo by Stephen Frink Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)

A Chimpanzee opens its Christmas presents at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo on December 17, 2013 in Bedfordshire, England. (Photo by Tony Margiocchi/Barcroft Media)

A six-year-old acrobat performs on the opening of a tourist festival in Bozhou, Anhui province, China May 3, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

People eat sushi off the body of a model at an opening event of a bar in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, August 22, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

In this Thursday, December 1, 2016 photo, Cat Bigney, part of the Oglala Native American tribe, waits on the shore of the Cannonball river for travelers to arrive by canoe at the Oceti Sakowin camp where people have gathered to protest the Dakota Access oil pipeline in Cannon Ball, N.D. So far, those at the camp have shrugged off the heavy snow, icy winds and frigid temperatures. But if they defy next week's government deadline to abandon the camp, demonstrators know the real deep freeze lies ahead. Life-threatening wind chills and towering snow drifts could mean the greatest challenge is simple survival. (Photo by David Goldman/AP Photo)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

Desk Safari is a new office phenomenon where you align your coworker’s head with an animal body on your desktop and take a photo. This is especially amusing if your coworker isn’t aware of what’s going on.