Teeming with images of spectacular underwater scenes from around the world, Call of the Blue is the culmination of a five-year project by the photographer and ocean conservationist Philip Hamilton. This groundbreaking book includes contributions from acclaimed scientists and ocean “guardians”, who reveal what drove them to answer the call of the blue. (Photo by Philip Hamilton/The Guardian)

An adorable baby koala is seen enjoying a snooze after a traumatic start to life. The baby koala, nicknamed “Blondie Bumstead”, is being cared for by a volunteer from the Ipswich Koala protection society in Queensland after her mother was killed by a dog. Blondie, who was named for her light fur, was given just a 50-50 chance of pulling through after the attack. But after a course of antibiotics and some tender loving car from volunteer Marilyn Spletter she has now been given a clean bill of health. According to Marilyn she has hand-reared around 40 baby koalas but says that Blondie, who will be released back into the wild after 15 months, is one of her favourites. She said: “She's got a little character all of her own and she knows what she wants and what she doesn't. When she's stressed I kiss her on the nose or I rub my nose on hers and it relaxes her”. (Photo by Jamie Hanson/Newspix/REX Features)

Elvis Presley impersonator Michael Conti sings as he officiates a wedding for Phoebe Kim and Colton Sorensen of California as they dance at the Little White Wedding Chapel on December 31, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. In what could be a record-breaking date for weddings in the city, thousands of couples are expected to get married on the specialty date with the repeating 1-2-3 1-2-3 pattern that also coincides with the New Year's Eve holiday and a weekend. The most popular date for Las Vegas weddings was in 2007, when 4,492 couples exchanged vows on July 7, or 7/7/07. Since 1953, more than five million weddings have been held in the city, when the Daily Herald in London published an article referring to Las Vegas as the “Wedding Capital of the World”. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

An amazing photo shows a rare meteor shower captured from Glastonbury Tor, UK. Astrophotographer Josh Dury took the photo when the skies cleared for 30 minutes in the early hours of the morning on January 4, 2024. Josh said the Quadrantids meteor shower is an active shower where up to 100 meteors can be seen per hour, although it only peaks for a few hours during January. He said that meteor showers are produced by debris left over from comets – but what produces the meteors during the Quadrantids meteor shower is unknown. (Photo by Josh Dury/South West News Service)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

It would seem to be something you'd see only in a cartoon or at a Phish concert, but according to park rangers in New South Wales, Australia, dozens of giant, fluorescent pink slugs have been popping up on a mountaintop there. The eight-inch creatures have been spotted only on Mount Kaputar, a 5,000-foot peak in the Nandewar Range in northern New South Wales. Scientists believe the eye-catching organisms are survivors from an era when Australia was home to rainforests. A series of volcanoes, millions of years of erosion and other geological changes “have carved a dramatic landscape at Mount Kaputar”, the park service wrote on its Facebook page, and unique arid conditions spared the slugs from extinction. (Photo by Michael Murphy/AFP Photo/NSW Environment Office)

Ayesha Farooq, 26, Pakistan's only female war-ready fighter pilot watches an airforce jet about to take off at Mushaf base in Sargodha, north Pakistan June 7, 2013. Farooq, from Punjab province's historic city of Bahawalpur, is one of 19 women who have become pilots in the Pakistan Air Force over the last decade – there are five other female fighter pilots, but they have yet to take the final tests to qualify for combat. A growing number of women have joined Pakistan's defence forces in recent years as attitudes towards women change. (Photo by Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

Darth Mykolaiovych Vader, who is dressed as the “Star Wars” character Darth Vader, poses for a picture as he dries his mask and helmet with a hairdryer in the bathroom of his apartments in Odessa, Ukraine, December 2, 2015. Darth Vader was bent on galactic domination, but his Ukrainian namesake enjoys more mundane pursuits: local politics, walking the family dog and a spot of embroidery. The Ukrainian citizen, who has changed his name to Darth Mykolaiovych Vader, ran for the post of local mayor in October, his political backers dressed as Stormtroopers. In his trademark black outfit, he is a regular sight around Odessa, a major port city on southern Ukraine's Black Sea coast. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)