This is the moment a diver appears to shake hands with a giant 52ft whale. The divers were just metres away when one humpback whale – which weighs 36,000kg – extends its giant flipper in a peaceful manner. (Photo by Masa Ushioda/SeaPics/Solent News & Photo Agency)

The British Ecological Society has announced the winners of its annual photography competition, Capturing Ecology. Taken by international ecologists and students, the winning images will be exhibited at the society’s joint annual meeting in Ghent in December. Here: Overall runner-up; Toucan, Mark Tatchell. (Photo by Mark Tatchell/British Ecological Society)

A Chinese tourist wears a mask as she arrives at Suvarnabhumi Airport during a welcome ceremony of Chinese Lunar New Year travellers in Bangkok, Thailand on January 22, 2020. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Tropical acrobatics by Adrià López Baucells in Manaus, Brazil. An unidentified South American marsupial, although the characteristic black markings on its face indicate it may be a mouse opossum. These small creatures are nocturnal and feed on bugs, fruit and bird eggs. (Photo by Adrià López Baucells/2019 Royal Society of Biology Photography Competition)

Members of the Dominican Armed Forces participate in a commemorative act on the 170th anniversary of national independence at the esplanade of Santo Domingo, on February 27, 2014. (Photo by Orlando Barria/EPA)

Goats wait to get unloaded from a vehicle at a livestock market during Dashain, the biggest religious festival for Hindus in Nepal, in Kathmandu, Nepal October 4, 2016. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

A Palestinian woman takes a picture of a member of the Israeli security forces as he takes her picture in a street in Jerusalem on December 16, 2017, as demonstrations continue to flare in the Middle East and elsewhere over the US president' s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel' s capital. (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP Photo)

This family of warthogs regularly visited our campsite in the Ethiopian highlands so I set up a remote camera with a wide-angle lens to photograph them as they rummaged around for food. They just had a mud bath. (Photo by Will Burrard-Lucas/Caters News Agency)