A participant in the Downtown Parade kicks off the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in Houston, Texas, US on February 25, 2023. (Photo by Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Lightning illuminates a thundercloud as a storm front hits the North Sea region near Westerhever, northern Germany, on August 11, 2014. (Photo by Daniel Reinhardt/AFP Photo/DPA)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

These Arab recruits line up in a barracks square in the British Mandate of Palestine, on December 28, 1940, for their first drill under a British solider. Some 6,000 Palestinian Arabs signed up with the British Army during the course of World War II. (AP Photo)

Aerial acrobat Schindler, notorious for his foolhardy stunts, practising one of his tricks listing out of the vertical, from a Klemp plane piloted by Richard Perlia. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images). Circa 1927

A mahout (elephant driver) walks a baby elephant across the city streets at night September 27, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

A man pulls a cart with collapsed cardboard boxes past boutiques in the Sinchon district in Seoul, May 5, 2015. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)