Tony and Judie Ellis, a British couple holidaying in the Maldives, spotted a crow flying past carrying a packet of cigarettes. It alighted on the roof of the villa next to theirs and began extracting the cigarettes from the packet. As Judie rushed to get her camera, two more crows arrived for a fag break. Judie, from the appropriately-named Crow borough in East Sussex, said: ‘The crow seemed to be dishing them out to the others
A polar bear lays in his new enclosure at the zoo in Hanover, Germany
A hippopotamus reacts as a zoo keeper sprays water on it on a hot day at a zoo in Ahmadabad, India
A chimpanzee sucks on a block of ice in the hot weather at Chester Zoo, northern England
Two critically endangered monkeys have been born at Drusillas Park, East Sussex, as part of a European breeding programme. This is the first time Sulawesi black crested macaques have been bred at the zoo. Black crested macaques are native to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and are now regarded as critically endangered
Three one-month old lion cubs, as yet unnamed, are shown to the public in the Kecskemet Game Park in Hungary
A white tiger cub yawns in front of his mother Radjah at the Maubeuge zoo, northern France
A keeper at the Biopark zoo in Valencia, eastern Spain, feeds a male baby Rothschild giraffe
A black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata) is seen at a zoo in Cali, Colombia
Busch Gardens Tampa in Florida welcomed two endangered baby red-ruffed lemurs recently. The sex of the babies has yet to be determined but they are developing well and are getting braver each day…
Staff at Chuanzhehui Restaurant in Hangzhou, eastern China, discovered a mother hedgehog and her six newborn babies in a warehouse
…One of the baby hedgehogs is pictured on somebody’s hand
A four-week-old wood owl perches on a wall at the Exotic Pet Refuge Centre in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, which is home to around 400 hundred animals, both exotic and native to Britain
Meet the real-life Fox & Hound: A fox cub that was rescued from certain death after he fell into a quarry has been nurtured back to health – by a dog. The male cub, named Copper, was rescued three weeks ago by a family who discovered him cold and malnourished at the bottom of a quarry in Portreath, Cornwall. He was handed in to a local fox rescue centre and was put into the care of wildlife expert Gary Zammit. But Gary’s dog Jack, a one-year-old lurcher, took over the nursing duties at the Feadon Farm Wildlife Centre
A gopher looks horrified as it realises that it is dinner for a heron in Arrowhead Marsh, California
Hummingbirds fly near a feeder at the home of Chris Caviezel in Hyak, Washington, USA. Caviezel uses sugar to create the nectar that draws the tiny birds to the dozen bright red feeders that hang outside his home
Cygnets sit beside their mother, nesting at Abbotsbury Swannery in Dorset
A jackal and a vulture face off after setting their sights on the same scrap of meat. Although the meat was closely guarded by the bird the jackal thought he’d try his luck – but he obviously hadn’t bargained for a fight. The picture was taken by husband and wife Lizet and Johann Grobbelaar at Giant’s Castle Nature Reserve in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa
A Siberian Chipmunk enjoys a snack in Bangalore, India.
