Children wearing bear fur costumes dance during a parade in Comanesti, Romania, Friday, December 30, 2022. In pre-Christian rural traditions, dancers wearing colored costumes or animal furs, toured from house to house in villages singing and dancing to ward off evil. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

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)

Constanza Mena poses for a photo during a red-nosed walk organized by the Flying Laughter clown group amid the new coronavirus pandemic, in downtown Santiago, Chile, Wednesday, April 28, 2021. The group aims to show that people do not lose the right to play and have fun in the street while pandemic protective measures are in effect. (Photo by Esteban Felix/AP Photo)

A Border Security Force (BSF) trooper performs a stunt on his motorcycle during a road show to celebrate 75 years of India's Independence, in Ahmedabad, India, August 25, 2021. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

Kang Na-ra, a North Korean defector who is now a beauty YouTuber, points at her lips after putting on a lipstick made by North Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, June 11, 2019. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A protester wearing improvised protective headgear walks away from a cloud of tear gas on July 18, 2021 in Bangkok, Thailand. Student protesters called for a demonstration demanding the resignation of Thailand Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-Cha, despite a ban on gatherings because of the country's current Covid-19 outbreak, and folded a demand for better action in combating the virus into their demands. (Photo by Sirachai Arunrugstichai/Getty Images)

Bar girls use their mobile phones outside a bar along the Walking Street where bars and sеx scenes are a commonplace July 31, 2016 in Pattaya, Thailand. Thailand's first female minister of tourism would like the sеx trade that is a huge business in the country to be banned. Tourists flock to Thailand for many sights including beautiful beaches but also for sеx tourism. Cities like Bangkok and Pattaya are well known as hubs of the Southeast Asian sеx trade, despite the fact that prostitution has been illegal in Thailand since 1960. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

A volunteer feeds a swift chick after it was found on the ground during a heatwave and given to the Centre Ornithologique de Readaptation in Genthod near Geneva, Switzerland on July 25, 2023. (Photo by Denis Balibouse/Reuters)