The week in wildlife

A seed pod hangs from a blooming yellow lapacho tree in a residential neighborhood of Asunción, Paraguay. The lapacho tree, known as the Paraguayan national tree by its Guarani name, tajy, bloomed full this year in its less common yellow variety Photograph: Jorge Adorno/Reuters

Two Australian red kangaroos lie in the sun at Sydney Wildlife World. The red kangaroo is the largest living marsupial and Australia's largest native land mammal, well adapted for Australia's dry interior. An Australian psychologist had to be rescued from her office after a "frantic" kangaroo crashed through the window and leaped around the room, toppling furniture, reports said Photograph: Greg Wood/AFP/Getty Images

A bilby, Australia's most endangered animal, grazing for food at the Sydney Wildlife World ahead of national bilby day in Australia this Sunday. The bilby, an Australian marsupial known as a natural digger, live in spiraling burrows that reach 2m in depth, and are well equipped with backward-facing pouches and three large central claws on their front feet Photograph: Rob Griffith/AP

An egret wades through the marsh in search of food, as the sun rises over the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, US Photograph: Ron Edmonds/AP

A dragonfly rests on a weed near Izmir, Turkey Photograph: Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images

A young male squirrel monkey in the Brazilian Amazon. All male squirrel monkeys are colour blind to red and green but the majority of females have full colour vision Photograph: Neitz Laboratory /NATURE/AFP/Getty Images

Bats from a cave near the Wat Khao Cong Pran temple fly out in search of food during dusk in Ratchaburi province, Thailand. The animals bring the temple a monthly income of $4,800 from the sale of almost seven tonnes of their guano and from tourists visiting the bat cave Photograph: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters

A caterpillar moves along a leaf in Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town is starting to experience the first signs of spring after weeks of rain and winter cold fronts Photograph: Nic Bothma/EPA

A worker tries to lift up a weak cow from among the carcasses of drought-stricken cows in a paddock at the Kenya Meat Commission (KMC) factory near Athi River, 31 miles east of Nairobi. Farmers are making their way to the recently revived KMC to sell their drought-stricken livestock for meat Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

An elusive Fiji petrel flies over the waves about 40km (25 miles) south of Fiji's remote island of Gau. The bird is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the producer of the world's red list of endangered animals. Last week it was photographed for the first time Photograph: J rg Kretzschmar/BirdLife International/AP

Rare four-eyed fish called anableps. Zoologists are celebrating after a pair was born at the aquarium at Blue Planet in Cheshire this week. The fish originally come from the rivers of South America where they use their bizarre eyes to see both above and below the water's surface at the same time Photograph: Blue Planet/PA

A perfectly preserved Cribrohantkenina inflata fossil plankton shell from Tanzania. A team of scientists studying rock samples in Africa has shown a strong link between falling carbon dioxide levels and the formation of Antarctic ice sheets 34m years ago. The results are the first to make the link, underpinning computer climate models that predict both the creation of ice sheets when CO2 levels fall and the melting of ice caps when CO2 levels rise. The scientists gathered sediment samples in the Tanzanian village of Stakishari where there are deposits of a particular type of well-preserved microfossils that can reveal past CO2 levels Photograph: HO/Reuters

A praying mantis clings to the branch of an African sumac tree Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters

The body of a stranded pilot whale is seen on a beach in the coastal region of Bustamante Bay in Argentina. Specialists are due to arrive at the area to investigate the situation, where 40 whales beached themselves last weekend. A similar occurrence involving 400 pilot whales happened in the same area in 1991 Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

Uromastyx geyris, commonly known as Saharan spiny-tailed lizards, are pictured in a glass enclosure on 17 September after being seized by customs officials at Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, in freight coming from Niger. In 2008 French customs seized some 690 live animals - 439 of these were turtles Photograph: Olivier Laban-mattei/AFP/Getty Images

A bird perches on a stone in a pond at the Keoladeo Ghana bird sanctuary in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India. Scarce rains affected bird arrivals and wildlife at Keoladeo national park as most water bodies in the sanctuary have turned dry Photograph: Harish Tyagi/EPA

Walrus hauled out on the shore of Icy Cape, near Barrow, Alaska. In recent years, sea ice has receded far beyond the outer continental shelf, forcing walrus to choose between riding the ice over waters too deep to reach clams or on to shore. Up to 200 dead walrus were spotted on another part of the cape in north-west Alaska on the Chukchi Sea by federal wildlife researchers from the US Geological Survey, who were on their way to a walrus tagging project Photograph: Gary Friedrichsen/AP