Reverend Peter Wall blesses a hamster during “The Blessing of Animals” at St. James Cathedral in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 30, 2023. (Photo by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Turkish National athlete Sahika Ercumen persists in her preparations for the dive along the shores of Karamagara Bay as she will dive to break the 105-meter world record in the variable weight category without fins on the 100th anniversary of the Turkish Republic in Hatay, Turkiye on October 15, 2023. The national athlete is determined to exceed the 105-meter world record currently held by Serbian diver Lena Balta in the variable weight category without fins. (Photo by Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Children attend a war safety awareness class conducted by civil defence members, in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan town in Idlib province, Syria May 14, 2016. (Photo by Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

Russia's Ekaterina Birlova casts a shadow on the sand as she serves to Poland during a women's beach volleyball match at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, August 9, 2016. (Photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo)

Jackie Galarza greets the Camarasaurus dinosaur held by Houston Ferguson during the “Jurassic Quest” experience at Broward County Convention Center on July 08, 2022 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Fans of dinosaurs can walk through moving and roaring animatronic replicas of the now extinct creatures during the three-day event. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Now celebrating its 40th year, Nikon Small World is widely regarded as the leading forum to recognize proficiency and photographic excellence of photography taken under the microscope. To select the winners, competition judges analyzed entries from all over the world covering subjects ranging from chemical compounds to up-close-and-personal looks at biological specimens. The 2014 winners will be revealed on October 30th. In 2014, the competition received over 1,200 entries from more than 79 countries around the world. (Photo by Dr. Igor Robert Siwanowicz/Nikon Small World 2014)

A coil-shaped Helix Nebula showing a fine web of filamentary “bicycle-spoke” features embedded in the colorful red and blue ring of gas. At 650 light-years away, the Helix is one of the nearest planetary nebulae to Earth. A planetary nebula is the glowing gas around a dying, Sun-like star. (Photo by Reuters/NASA)

“Centuries ago, Inuit hunted the bowhead whale. At that time, whale hunting undoubtedly was part of a complex and very important ritual, if only because of the size of the catch. The position that the ancestors of today's Inuit occupied in the living world involved a relationship with the spirit that inhabited each animal but also their species”. (Photo by Robert Frechette/2014 Sony World Photography Awards)