Female sea lion “Sarasa” holds a hose with her mouse to help a trainer clean her room at the Shinagawa Aqua Stadium aquarium in Tokyo on December 30, 2014. The aquarium is carrying out year-end general cleaning of their facilities. (Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP Photo)

Honorable Mention: “The Storm”. During I was taking photo with my nephew, the storm came and I caught this beautiful moment. Photo location: Kocaeli, Turkey. (Photo and caption by Aytül Akbaş/National Geographic Photo Contest)

School girls stand next to a ballot box at a polling station during the municipal elections in Havana April 19, 2015. Cuba held its first local elections since a historic thaw in relations with the United States with an unusual wrinkle in the single-party system: two of the 27,000 candidates openly oppose the government. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A child coated in silver body paint, smiles during the “Loucura Suburbana”, or Suburban Madness pre-Carnival parade, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, February 8, 2024. (Photo by Bruna Prado/AP Photo)

A Palestinian child receives food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on February 20, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

Revellers perform during the “Salsodromo”, the kick-off of the music and cultural festival Feria de Cali (Cali Fair) in Cali, Colombia, on December 25, 2021. The “Salsodromo”, an event in which more than 2,500 revellers and salsa music dancers perform along a kilometre-long stripe, marks the start of the Feria de Cali festival every year. (Photo by Paola Mafla/AFP Photo)

A woman takes part in an initial military training for civilians at the sports and patriotic club “Yaropolk” in Krasnogorsk outside Moscow, Russia on December 3, 2022. (Photo by Yulia Morozova/Reuters)

A woman walks past the barbed wire separating Belarusian servicemen and Belarusian opposition supporters during a rally in Minsk, Belarus, Sunday, August 30, 2020. Tens of thousands of demonstrators have gathered in the capital of Belarus, beginning the fourth week of daily protests demanding that the country's authoritarian president resign. The protests began after an Aug. 9 presidential election that protesters say was rigged and officials say gave President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term in office. (Photo by Tut.By via AP Photo)