An animal rights activist washes herself with red dye to mimic blood during a protest against the testing of shampoo on animals in Barcelona. April 24, 2012. (Photo by Raul Albaledo/AFP Photo)

The National Geographic Photo Ark is a travelling exhibition of photographer Joel Sartore’s quest to create a photo archive of biodiversity around the world. So far, Sartore has captured studio portraits of more than 6,000 species – a number that he hopes to double. On 1 July, the ark will open at Melbourne zoo – the first time it has been exhibited in the southern hemisphere. More than 50 portraits will be on display, including many of Australian endangered animals being protected by programs at the zoo itself. These captions have been edited from text supplied by Melbourne zoo. Here: Barking owl. (Photo by Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark/The Guardian)

A small section of the expanding remains of the Veil Nebula, a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago. The entire nebula is 110 light-years across, covering six full moons on the sky as seen from Earth, and resides about 2,100 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. (Photo by Reuters/NASA/ESA/Hubble)

Women dancing at the disco club Xenon in New York City, USA in 1978. Xenon was a popular disco in Manhattan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was the only nightclub popular enough to compete with Studio 54. (Photo by Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Model Daisy Lowe has been camouflaged into a wall of daisies by world-leading body paint artist Carolyn Roper, to showcase the Samsung QLED TV's Ambient Mode feature in London, United Kingdom on August 2, 2018. The work took eight hours to complete. (Photo by Matt Alexander/PA Wire)

Mott Sreymom, 34, a rat handler with the humanitarian demining organization APOPO, carries an African giant pouched rat back from a landmine field in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (Photo by Anton L. Delgado/AP Photo)

Sudan cheetah cub Assama inspects a camera bag in its enclosure at the Landau Zoo, in Landau, Germany, 03 September 2025. Assama, born in July as the only cub to a cheetah cat, was rejected by its mother, and is now being bottle-fed by its caretakers. (Photo by Ronald Wittek/EPA)

A topless activist of women's rights group FEMEN tries to break a segment of the Berlin wall which is on display outside the German embassy, during a protest against EU visa regime for Ukrainian citizens in Kiev, Ukraine, November 24, 2016. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)