A thirsty timber wolf, Lithuania, 2018. (Photo by Erikas Plucas/Alamy Stock Photo)

A pine marten – one of a few wild mammals doing well in Britain (although they number just 3,700). A fifth of the country’s wild mammals are at high risk of extinction, research shows. (Photo by Maurice Flynn/The Mammal Society)

This perfectly-timed GoPro snap captures the moment an angrymagpiecame within inches of a biker, as swooping season takes hold in Australia. The notoriously aggressive bird can be seen flying with its wings tucked in so it looks exactly like a torpedo in the magnificent photograph from Middlemount, Queensland. Retail businesswoman Monique Newton, 53 was riding pillion with a friend when she spied the divebombing bird – but rather than speed off, they slowed down to capture it up close. (Photo by Monique Newton/Caters News Agency)

13-year-old Emmanuel Festo from Tanzania poses for a portrait with a plush toy that he says makes him feel safe at night and that he sleeps with, in New York's Staten Island, September 21, 2015. Albino body parts are highly valued in witchcraft and can fetch a high price. Superstition leads many to believe albino children are ghosts who bring bad luck. Some believe the limbs are more potent if the victims scream during amputation, according to a 2013 United Nations report. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Emily Hicks (not pictured) of Charleston holds her dog Murphy along the waterfront ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Dorian in Charleston, South Carolina, U.S., September 4, 2019. (Photo by Randall Hill/Reuters)

People and Nature category winner: Why did the sloth cross the road? by Andrew Whitworth (Osa Conservation and University of Glasgow), taken in Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. “I was driving out from the Osa Peninsula, located on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica on a dark, stormy day. This female three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus) had luckily just about made it across the road, and the drivers of the Toyota on this occasion had spotted her in good time”. (Photo by Andrew Whitworth/2019 British Ecological Society Photography Competition)

in WA police cordon guards the house of Poland's ruling conservative party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski against a crowd protesting a decision by the Constitutional Court, in Warsaw, Poland, on Friday, October 23, 2020. Poland’s top court ruled Thursday that a law allowing abortion of fetuses with congenital defects is unconstitutional, shutting a major loophole in the predominantly Catholic country's abortion laws that are among the strictest in Europe. Defying the pandemic-related ban on gatherings, the protesters chanted for the government to resign. (Photo by Czarek Sokolowski/AP Photo)

A Bengal tigress who gave birth to four cubs at the Guadalajara Zoo, Jalisco state, Mexico runs at the zoo on October 5, 2021. (Photo by Ulises Ruiz/AFP Photo)