Kea are the only true alpine parrots in the world and thrive as cunning opportunists in the freezing conditions of the Southern Alps. Kea are thought to have developed their wide array of food-finding strategies during the last great ice age, where they learned to adapt using their unusual powers of curiosity. (Photo by Tom Walker/BBC Pictures/The Guardian)

An artist draws a mural on a wall during a wall painting competition in Amritsar on February 25, 2023. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

The Belgian photographer Anton Kusters spent two years photographing the Yakuza, Japan’s most notorious gang. He returned with some amazing images that he made into a book called “Odo Yakuza Tokyo”. (Odo means “the way of the cherry blossom” and is the credo of the Yakuza family he followed. Photo: An erotic danser picks up fake 2-dollar bills during a private dance with a Yakuza customer in a strip tease bar in Kabukicho, a bar which is controlled by the ODO family – 2010. (Photo and caption by Anton Kusters)

Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

American actress Bella Thorne poses seductively for Roberto Cavalli early December 2022. (Photo by bellathorne/Instagram)

British-Albanian singer Dua Lipa during the Milan Fashion Week Womenswear Fall/Winter 2023/2024 on February 23, 2023 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by dualipa/Instagram)

A caiman in the Pantanal region of Brazil in 2021. They are used to seeing humans, allowing the photographer, Leighton Lum, a close-up shot. (Photo by Leighton Lum/Caters News Agency)

Hungarians witness the fallen statue of communist leader Josef Stalin in front of the National Theater in Budapest on October 24, 1956. Demonstrators revolting against communist rule in Hungary pulled the statue to the ground at Dozsa Gyorgy on Oct. 23 and hauled it by tractor to Blaha Lujza where it was later smashed to pieces by the people. (Photo by Arpad Hazafi/AP Photo)