Stunning image capture the moment a tiny harvest mouse uses wheat stems as stilts as he munches on a kernel in UK in August 2025. The minute-mouse, who weighs as much as a 2p coin and is only two-inches-long, uses his prehensile tail to keep himself perfectly level. (Photo by Tony Nellis/South West News Service)

Hira Punjabi, from Maharashtra, India, took this stunning photo of a parakeet attacking a tree-climbing lizard, which has won the SINWP Bird Photographer of the Year 2024, in aid of RSPB. She had to wait by the same tree for four days to get the perfect action shot. (Photo by Hira Punjabi/SINWP via SWNS)

A boat commutes across the Mekong river in Phnom Penh on August 8, 2014. The Mekong is the world's twelth longest river running from the Tibetan Plateau through China's Yunnan province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. (Photo by Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP Photo)

When a French politician remarked that a monument should be raised in honour of American independence at a dinner party in 1865 he probably didn't imagine that the result would become an international icon of freedom. ...

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

A statue of a man sleepwalking in his underpants is surrounded by snow on the campus of Wellesley College, in Wellesley, Mass., Wednesday, February 5, 2014. The sculpture entitled “Sleepwalker” is part of an exhibit by sculptor Tony Matelli at the college's Davis Museum. (Photo by Steven Senne/AP Photo)

The Predator’s Fins: Atho Ullah, Indonesia. 3rd place, Portfolio category. A freshly caught shark is taken ashore. Efforts to regulate shark fishing in Indonesia are not effective enough. Lack of awareness of the role sharks play in the ocean’s ecosystem poses a major threat to marine life. (Photo by Atho Ullah/2020 Hamdan International Photography Award)

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)