Wakodahatchee wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida, US. Equipped with sinewy necks and spear-like bills, great blue herons can lunge with fearsome speed to strike their aquatic prey. Adults will also employ rapid stabbing motions as one aspect of their complex courtship displays; they’re seemingly dangerous moves, but fitting to the intensity of mating season. (Photo by Melissa Rowell/Audubon Photography Awards)

American paratroopers from the the 82nd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron take part in training for rescue operations in East Africa in the last decade of April 2024. (Photo by Senior Airman Olivia Gibson/US Air Force/CMA)

Pickles the cat was once abandoned and had a hard time finding a home because of his size until he met a couple who have a heart and home big enough to take him in.

Pixel – the cat about to enter the record books as the world's shortest feline. Standing at just five inches from shoulder to paw this compact cat could break the previous record held by her mother Fizz Girl in 2012, who stood at six inches.

For more than 2,000 years, women from the Baiga tribe in the highland district of Dindori, in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state, have been tattooed. Sumintra, 25, from Bona village, has the markings across her forehead, legs and arms. The women who work as tattoo artists are knowledgable about the different types of designs and pigments preferred by various tribes, and their meanings are passed to them by their mothers. The tattooing ‘season’ begins with the approach of winter. (Photo by Ronny Sen/WaterAid/The Guardian)

The Queen Mary 2 is saluted by the HMB Endeavour, the replica of Captain James Cook's ship, on March 4, 2012 off the coast of Victoria, Australia. (Photo by James Morgan/Carnival Australia via Getty Images)

An Emirati child plays with an airplane model near the venue of the Mazayin Dhafra Camel Festival, on December 20, 2012 near the city of Madinat Zayed, 150 kms west of Abu Dhabi. The festival, which attracts participants from around the Gulf region, includes a camel beauty contest, a display of UAE handcrafts and other activities aimed at promoting the country's folklore. (Photo by Karim Sahib/AFP Photo)

More than 1,500 snappers submitted their most hilarious pictures of all creatures great and small, and now 45 have made the cut. From drunken-eyed owls to embarrassed chipmunks and laughing goats – the finalists in the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are guaranteed to raise a smile. Here: 'Dancing sifaka'. (Photo by Alison Buttigieg/Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards/Mercury Press)