Devotees of the small farming village of Bibiclat celebrate the Feast of Saint John the Baptist while covered in banana leaves and mud on June 24, 2025 in Aliaga, Philippines. Known as the “Taong Putik” (mud people), the ritual happens yearly in this small farming village as their own version of expressing their faith and celebrating the feast of Saint John the Baptist whom the survivors of the Japanese occupation in 1944 in their area prayed to for rain to save their fellow villagers. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

A timber truck driver (L) dressed as Father Frost is saluted by a soldier at the Kremlin's Spasskiye (Saviour) Gate in Moscow, Russian Federation, on December 24, 2013. (Photo by Vyacheslav Prokofyev/ITAR-TASS/ZUMA Press)

Participants pose for photographs as they take part in a “Hat Walk” during London Hat Week in London, Britain on April 7, 2019. (Photo by Simon Dawson/Reuters)

A health worker applies a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine during the first day of a three-day COVID-19 vaccination campaign for people over age 35 in the Complexo da Maré favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Brazil, Thursday, July 29, 2021. Some recipients will be monitored to study the rate of protection the vaccines provide and the extent to which virus variants are circulating. (Photo by Bruna Prado/AP Photo)

A Palestinian child receives food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on February 20, 2024. (Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

Winton Elementary fifth graders Juliana Ragan, from left, Chloe Windsor and Paisley Ganske wait backstage for their turn to perform as the Andrew Sisters during the Pearl Harbor/Veterans assembly at the school on Monday, December 7, 2015, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Dec. 7 is the 74th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. (Photo by Kathy Plonka/The Spokesman-Review via AP Photo)

A Kashmiri woman walks on a footbridge as it rains in Srinagar, June 24, 2015. This year's monsoon rains in India are officially forecast to be only 88 percent of the long-term average. (Photo by Danish Ismail/Reuters)

The National Geographic Photo Ark is a travelling exhibition of photographer Joel Sartore’s quest to create a photo archive of biodiversity around the world. So far, Sartore has captured studio portraits of more than 6,000 species – a number that he hopes to double. On 1 July, the ark will open at Melbourne zoo – the first time it has been exhibited in the southern hemisphere. More than 50 portraits will be on display, including many of Australian endangered animals being protected by programs at the zoo itself. These captions have been edited from text supplied by Melbourne zoo. Here: Barking owl. (Photo by Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark/The Guardian)