Performers on boats take part in the Qintong Boat Festival at Qin Lake National Wetland Park on April 6, 2019 in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province of China. The boat festival is held around the Qingming Festival every year, and up to 10,000 participants from nearby villages and towns, with more than 500 boats, took part in the event this year. (Photo by Tang Dehong/VCG via Getty Images)

A pine marten – one of a few wild mammals doing well in Britain (although they number just 3,700). A fifth of the country’s wild mammals are at high risk of extinction, research shows. (Photo by Maurice Flynn/The Mammal Society)

An arctic fox in Iceland spotted on March 19, 2025 by Marc Freebrey, a marketing officer from Gloucestershire. (Photo by Marc Freebrey/South West News Service)

The Sunda lemur uses a special membrane to “fly” between trees while on the lookout for food in Java, Indonesia in the last decade of June 2024. (Photo by Dzulfikri/Solent News)

“The pygmy hippopotamus (Choeropsis liberiensis or Hexaprotodon liberiensis) is a large mammal native to the forests and swamps of western Africa (the specific name liberiensis means “of Liberia”, as this is where the vast majority live). The pygmy hippo is reclusive and nocturnal. It is one of only two extant species in the Hippopotamidae family, the other being its much larger cousin the common hippopotamus”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Monifa, a one month old baby Pygmy Hippopotamus takes a morning bath at Taronga Zoo on November 7, 2008 in Sydney, Australia. Monifa is the first Pygmy Hippopotamus to be born at Taronga Zoo in the past twenty three years. (Photo by Sergio Dionisio/Getty Images)

Camels graze in front of a spacecraft tracking station ahead of the Soyuz MS-10 upcoming launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, October 9, 2018. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

Meet the star students of orangutan school – the unique rehab centre where orphaned apes are taught how to climb trees and survive in the wild without their mum and dad. (Photo by Caters News)

Shortlisted: “Two big eyes” by Miao Yong (Zejiang province, China). Damselflies look over the leaves. “I was photographing insects in a park near my home when suddenly I found two damselflies in the grass. They kept flying and it was very difficult to focus until suddenly they parked behind a leaf”. (Photo by Miao Yong/2017 Royal Society of Biology Photographer of the Year)