Dead sperm whales are seen washed up on a beach on Texel Island, The Netherlands, January 13, 2016. The five sperm whales that beached on the Dutch lsland of Texel on Tuesday have died overnight, Dutch media reported. It is extremely unusual for so many whales to be in Dutch waters, a spokesman for the Ecomare marine centre told local paper Noordhollands Dagblad. Efforts to get the whales back into open water on Tuesday evening failed and rescuers finally withdrew from the beach at around midnight. The area of beach where the whales are has been closed to the public, to minimise the distress to the animals. (Photo by Cris Toala Olivares/Reuters)

A reporter takes pictures of a soldier during the annual Han Kuang military exercise in Kinmen, Taiwan, September 7, 2015. Rustic Kinmen, with a population of less than 129,000, is a half-hour ferry ride to China, but it takes an hour to fly to major Taiwan cities. Just off its shores, glass-walled high-rises wink seductively from the booming mainland port of Xiamen in one of China's most prosperous provinces. (Photo by Pichi Chuang/Reuters)

Audrey Lu and Misha Mitrofanov of the United States compete in the Pairs Short Program during day 1 of the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Rostelecom Cup at Megasport Arena on November 15, 2019 in Moscow, Russia. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

To produce the images that convey his fatalistic and ironic approach to life, tinged with hope, he needed the environment and knowledge of Mother Russia, oiled with a bit of bribery to certain circus trainers. Enter the Great Russian Bear, the personification of Russia for the last several centuries, onto center stage and into his studio. The bear is recognized as both brutish and cute – Misha was the mascot for the 1980 Olympic Games – and has remained a symbol of Russia since Tsarist times. In 2009 it is the symbol of the United Russia Party.

A penguin (Manchots Royaux) walks on the basement area, early morning on December 25, 2022, at the Kerguelen Islands, also known as the Desolation Islands, are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic. (Photo by Patrick Hertzog/AFP Photo)

The Big Island's Mauna Loa Volcano erupts on November 28, 2022 on the Island of Hawaii. For the first time in almost 40 years, the biggest active volcano in the world erupted prompting an emergency response on the Big Island. (Photo by Andrew Richard Hara/Getty Images)

The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) was the most popular species overall based on English language Wikipedia page views. It is the world’s largest lizard, living on the islands of Komodo, Rinca and other smaller islands, and on Flores island in Indonesia. (Photo by Eric Nathan/Alamy)