A little brown bear cub shows his doting mum that she is always on parent duty as he uses her as a scratching post. These adorable photographs of two playful bear cubs and their watchful mum were captured by American nature photographer D. Robert Franz, 56, on a visit to Lake Clark National Park, Alaska. 'What we see in these photographs is the interaction between the mother brown bear and her two cubs,' says D. Robert, of Cody, Wyoming.
BEHIND the doors of this building, with its stacks of mattresses and discarded remains of wheelchairs, lies another victim of austerity cuts .
A brave praying mantis makes an unusual friend in an Oriental garden lizard .
WITHOUT A care in the world, this little snow monkey puts his feet up and settles in for a snooze .
When Janet Curry, 38, was told she was ‘too big to date’ by a man she met on the dating website Plenty of Fish, she didn’t let it stop her from looking for love .
A hungry hippo is seconds away from catching a bird in its gigantic jaws .
A brave leopard kicks back and relaxes in the sunshine - just inches from an enormous crocodile .
FULL OF STUNNING colours and swirling shapes, the furrows on these fields create a mix of mesmerising patterns .
BASKING in smug satisfaction, a confident squirrel gives a wink to the camera .
A brave cricket takes his chances as he sits on top of this green papua tree frog .
A BLIND school-girl whose growth has been stunted by a rare medical condition is finding her feet again with the help of a specially made mini-cane .
A British diver has set a new world record for the longest warm water scuba dive by spending a mammoth 49 hours and 56 minutes under water .
A lazy otter finds the ideal spot to soak up the sun and sleep off his lunch .