Andreyka, a 10-month-old female bear cub, plays with Rommi, an Alaskan malamute, at the Siberian Zoo in the settlement of Listvyanka, Irkutsk Region, Russia on December 9, 2020. The bear cub, which was found in a weak condition earlier this year, now play-fights with the Alaskan malamute, who adopted her and has seen three generations of bear cubs brought up in the Siberian zoo and released back into the wild. (Photo by Yuri Novikov/Reuters)

Female Kurdish Peshmerga fighters affiliated with Iran's separatist Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), are pictured at a base in an undisclosed location in the Arbil province, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on December 1, 2022. Iranian-Kurdish rebel groups have for decades sought refuge in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, but they have recently come under fresh fire amid weeks of protests in the neighbouring Islamic republic. (Photo by Safin Hamed/AFP Photo)

A honour guard soldier gives a flower to a girl on International Women's Day in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 8, 2024. International Women's Day on March 8 is an official holiday in Russia. Per tradition, men give flowers and gifts to female relatives, friends and colleagues, even though in the past two years flowers have gotten more expensive. Marches, demonstrations and conferences are being held the world over, from Asia to Latin America and elsewhere. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

Boys and younger men from the Ilosvai Selymes Peter folk dance group pour buckets of cold water on a girl as they attend the traditional watering of local girls on Easter Monday in Komarovce, Velke Trakany, Slovakia on April 10, 2023. During Easter Holy Week, the ancient tradition of Easter sprinkling known as “watering of the girls” when Hungarian boys visit their female friends, recite poems, and pour water on them, and in exchange the girls offer the boys food and drink. (Photo by Robert Nemeti/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A young girl dressed as living goddess Kumari drinks juice as she waits for Kumari Puja, a worship ritual at Hanuman Dhoka, Basantapur Durbar Square, Kathmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, September 27, 2023. Girls under the age of nine gathered for the tradition of worshiping young prepubescent girls as manifestations of the divine female energy. The ritual holds a strong religious significance in the Newar community that seeks divine blessings to save small girls from diseases and bad luck in the years to come. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

Female North Korean traffic police officers gather in front of bronze statues of the late leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il to pay their respects in Pyongyang, North Korea on Saturday, February 16, 2013. North Koreans turned out to commemorate what would have been the 71th birthday of Kim Jong Il who died on December 17, 2011. (Photo by David Guttenfelder/AP Photo)

“Serengeti National Park encompasses 5,700 square miles of grassy plains and woodlands near the northern border of Tanzania, and is home to more than 3,500 lions grouped into a couple dozen prides. Photographer Nick Nichols and videographer Nathan Williamson made several extended trips to the Serengeti between July 2011 and January 2013, determined to break new visual ground in their coverage of the Serengeti Lions”. Photo: Cubs of the Simba East pride: too young to kill but old enough to crave meat. Adult females, and sometimes males, do the hunting. Zebras and wildebeests rank high as chosen prey in the rainy season. (Photo by Michael Nichols/National Geographic via The Atlantic)

“Microscope images forge an extraordinary bond between science and art, said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Olympus America's Vice President and General Manager for the Scientific Equipment Group. We founded this competition to focus on the fascinating stories coming out of today's life science research laboratories. The thousands of images that people have shared with the competition over the years reflect some of the most exciting work going on in research today – work that can help shed light on the living universe and ultimately save lives. We look at BioScapes and these beautiful images as sources of education and inspiration to us and the world”. – OlympusBioScapes

Photo: Pretarsus of the third leg of a female drone fly (Eristalis tenax), ventral view, by Dr. Jan Michels, Institute of Zoology, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany. (Photo by Olympus BioScapes)