A baby elephant struggles to climb out of a dam before being rescued by rangers at Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa in the last decade of March 2025, having been pushed into the water by another elephant. (Photo by Anne Laing/Caters News Agency)

A brown bear waits for food at the zoo in Madrid, Spain on July 30, 2016. (Photo by Jorge Sanz/Pacific Press/SIPA Press/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

ESA astronaut Tim Peake posted this stunning image on his social media channels, commenting: “Station passed through magnificent aurora Australis last night”. Tim is set to return to Earth on 18 June 2016, bringing his six-month Principia mission to the ISS to an end. During his stay he performed more than 30 scientific experiments for ESA and taking part in numerous others from ESA's international partners. ESA and the UK Space Agency have partnered to develop many exciting educational activities around the Principia mission, aimed at sparking the interest of young children in science and space. (Photo by Tim Peake/ESA/NASA)

A gray heron (Ardea cinerea) that fished a common carp (Cyprinus carpio) in Geneva, Switzerland, 21 April 2019. (Photo by Martial Trezzini/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Inquisitive elephant seal pups venture towards a photographer on South Georgia, an uninhabited island near Antarctica early July 2022. The seals are not used to seeing humans and shuffled closer to Charlotte Rhodes rather than shying away. (Photo by Charlotte Rhodes/Media Drum Images)

Carnival revellers take the metro in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on February 19, 2023. Shaking the ground to the beat of their drums, Rio de Janeiro's famed carnival parades returned Sunday in a swirl of glitter, sequins and samba, the festival's first full-on edition since Covid-19 and Brazil's bitterly divisive elections. (Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP Photo)

“The RSPB’s Snettisham Nature Reserve lies on the edge of The Wash, one of the most important bird estuaries in the United Kingdom. The Wash, on England’s east coast, supports over 300,000 birds, and Snettisham sometimes holds more than a third of them”. – The Palm Beach Post. Photo: Waders flock together seeking new feeding grounds during the incoming tide. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images via The Palm Beach Post)

“Eye of a toad”. Animal Portraits, Łukasz Bożycki, Poland. Early spring sees a pond near Łukasz’s home city of Warsaw, Poland, full of mating frogs and a few toads. On this March day, Łukasz shared the pond with them for an evening, sitting in the icy water in his chest-high waders, keeping as still as possible, despite the numbing cold, so that the amphibians could get used to him. “I wanted to find a fresh way of portraying the amphibians”, he says, “at water level”. Using a telephoto lens, he focused on one lone toad and waited for the sun to dip almost below the horizon before pressing the shutter, using flash to bring out the details in the shadow. His prize was “the glorious pool of sunset colour” and fiery glow of the toad’s eye. Nikon D80 + 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens + extension tube; 1/125 sec at f9 (-2.3 e/v); ISO 100; built-in flash. (Photo by Łukasz Bożycki)