A guest arrives outside the Anna Sui show at the Strand Rare Book Room in New York on February 10, 2024. (Photo by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post)

A blue crab, a highly invasive alien species, is seen at Lio Piccolo during the reforestation day on April 05, 2025 in Venice, Italy. The island of Lio Piccolo in the northern lagoon of Venice is being replanted with 16,000 new trees that will protect the salt marsh ecosystem that is fundamental to the natural health of Venice and the lagoon by WOWnature project, an Etifor initiative. (Photo by Simone Padovani/Getty Images)

Animal rights activists covered with fake blood sit on the floor during a protest against the use of animals in research to mark World Day for Animals in Laboratories in central Madrid April 24, 2014. The sign reads, “How many rabbits do your shampoo kill?”. (Photo by Andrea Comas/Reuters)

Rapper Destiny Nicole Frasqueri, known professionally as Princess Nokia performs during the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, U.S., April 22, 2022. (Photo by Maria Alejandra Cardona/Reuters)

The front wheels of a tractor lift off the ground as the driver moves a heavy trailer outside Peshawar, Pakistan February 19, 2018. (Photo by Fayaz Aziz/Reuters)

A cow grazes in a field in front of the Nahr Bin Omar oil field and facility near Iraq's southern port city of Basra, on April 4, 2023. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

A woman walks in the Zaryadye Park, with a Soviet era skyscraper seen in the background, during a sunny day in Moscow, Russia on April 21, 2025. (Photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)

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)