Police officers remove Extinction Rebellion activists blocking a main street outside the Health Ministry, during a protest demanding actions against climate change, in Madrid, on March 26, 2021. (Photo by Gabriel Bouys/AFP Photo)

Period-costumed actors participate in the 150th anniversary re-enactment of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Museum of Confederacy in Appomattox, Virginia, April 9, 2015. (Photo by Jay Paul/Reuters)

Andrew Parkinson, animal behaviour category winner: Crepuscular Contentment, Derbyshire. “In 15 years of working with badgers I’ve never seen a badger sit out in the open to have a scratch. I was sat concealed behind a tree and downwind so it was especially nice that the badger had his back to me, demonstrating just how inconspicuous and inconsequential my presence was”. (Photo by Andrew Parkinson/British Wildlife Photography Awards 2017)

In more “raccoons are getting more like us” news, a drunk raccoon was found in a liquor store in Virginia, US in the first decade of December 2025. The animal had got into the shop via some loose ceiling tiles, knocked bottles of spirits off the shelves, lapped up the contents and passed out in the toilets. Once it had sobered up, it was released back into the wild – no doubt with a crashing hangover. (Photo by AP Photo)

A 15-year-old girl denied a horse from her parents has turned to a cow to fulfil her riding dreams. Teenager Regina Mayer, from southern Germany, is able to ride her cow, Luna. She has even trained her bovine pet to soar over a beer-crate hurdle like a regular show jumper. Why, you may well ask, when most cow-owners are surely content to let the creatures chew and lactate and sit down to indicate the imminent arrival of rain? Well, Regina's parents wouldn't let her have a horse.

A worker wearing a protective mask uses a blower to remove leafs from a walkway during sunny autumn weather near Stallikon, Switzerland on October 27, 2020. (Photo by Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

People remove meat from the bones of animals slaughtered for Eid al-Adha after they have been discarded at a garbage dump in Yangon, Myanmar, September 25, 2015. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

A riot policeman fires into the air during clashes with opposition supporters at a rally demanding a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, May 11, 2016. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)