Michael O’Neill won a prize in animal portraits with fry of a peacock bass hovering around their mother for protection against predators in South Florida. (Photo by Michael Patrick O'Neill/2016 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year)

Golden monkeys play at a conservation base in Shennongjia, central China's Hubei Province, January 26, 2018. The golden monkey conservation base witnessed a snowfall recently. (Photo by Du Huaju/Xinhua/Barcroft Images)

An adult specimen of Nannospalax (leucodon) montanosyrmiensis, a variant of the lesser mole-rat (Spalax leucodon) is pictured near Albertirsa, some 60 kilometers southeast of Budapest, Hungary, 12 May 2018. The critically endangered rodent lives in several isolated populations in the Carpathian Basin. (Photo by Sandor Ujvari/EPA/EFE)

Fossil records indicate that this early lizard, Megalania (Megalania prisca or Varanus priscus), was a whopping seven metres in length. They were part of a megafaunal assemblage that inhabited southern Australia during the Pleistocene. The youngest fossil remains date to around 50,000 years ago. The first aboriginal settlers of Australia might have encountered them and been a factor in their extinction. (Photo by Sky TV/The Guardian)

In this July 12, 2007 file photo, a two-day-old piping plover runs along a beach in the Quonochontaug Conservation Area in Westerly, R.I. (Photo by Steven Senne/AP Photo)

This bat gives a cheeky smile as he gobbles down his food at Singapore Zoo, on September 10, 2013. (Photo by Benny Iskander/HotSpot Media)

A group of frogs hitched a lift on a passing crocodile. Clearly comfortable in the croc’s company the amphibians wait patiently for their chauffeur to move. But the bemused crocodile doesn’t appear to be going anywhere in a hurry. The hilarious images were captured by Tanto Yensen, 36, from Jakarta, Indonesia. (Photo by Tanto Yensen/Media Drum World Photo Agency)