The Most Surprising Photos of 2013

January 3: More than 17,500 animals, including this bullfrog and birds, fish, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, are counted in the annual stock take at the London Zoo.

Jan. 6, 2013. Lions in their enclosure react as tourists throw snowballs at them in the Hangzhou Zoo.

Jan. 4, 2013. Vladimr Franz, Czech artist and composer and candidate for the Czech presidency, attends a public pre-election debate in Prague, Czech Republic.

January 5: With temperatures around 46 degrees Fahrenheit, a man plays in the surf, joining thousands of others in celebrating the New Year by jumping into the North Sea, during the traditional New Year's Dive in Ostend, Belgium. 

January 9: A polar bear is fed by a zookeeper at the Everland Amusement Park in Yongin, South Korea. 

Jan. 11, 2013. An employee wearing a panda costume slides down from an ice sculpture during the Harbin International Ice and Snow World festival in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China.

Jan. 17, 2013. The entrance of a tunnel dug by thieves in order to enter the safe deposit room of a bank in Berlin. Robbers dug the 100-foot-long passage from a nearby underground parking garage into a branch of Berliner Volksbank and stole the contents of several hundred safe-deposit boxes.

Jan. 20, 2013. People throw turnips at the Jarramplas as he makes his way through the streets beating his drum during the Jarramplas Festival in Piornal, Spain.

Jan. 22, 2013. A man holds two burned birds after a fire went off in a compound for homeless Libyan families in Benghazi.

Jan. 23, 2013. An Orthodox priest blesses rifles during a ceremony where new recruits receive their weapons at a military base of the Belarussian Interior Ministry in Minsk. The traditional ceremony was attended by 325 Belarussian recruits, and it is held a month after the recruits take their military oath.

Jan. 24, 2013. Authorities carry out the court-ordered amputation of the fingers of a convicted thief in a public square in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz, Iran. The 29-year-old man was convicted for being part of a 10-member gang that carried out burglaries in the city. He was sentenced to the amputation of three fingers, the confiscation of his property and three years in prison.

Jan. 24, 2013. A Ukrainian National Circus artist performs with dogs during presentation of the new program in Kiev, Ukraine.

Jan. 24, 2013. Parking meters stand out from sand dunes at the Seaside Heights, N.J., amusement park and boardwalk which was devestated last fall by Superstorm Sandy.

Jan. 24, 2013. The outfit worn by the two-year-old Princess Anne at Britain's Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation on June 2, 1953, is seen during a photo opportunity at the Throne Room of Buckingham Palace in central London.

Jan. 28, 2013. US surfer Garrett McNamara rides a wave off Praia do Norte beach in Nazare, Portugal.

February 1: Priests hold onto the coffin of King Norodom Sihanouk during the funeral procession in Phnom Penh. Thousands of mourners accompanied a gilded chariot carrying the body of the former king - the dominant figure of modern Cambodia - in the funeral procession to a cremation ground next to the palace where he was crowned more than 70 years ago.

Feb. 1, 2013. Masha, an 11-year-old bear from a traveling circus troupe based in Moscow, practices a tightrope walking act during rehearsals at the Circus on Fontanka in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Feb. 3, 2013. Zoo owner Emmanuel Tangco reads a book to his snakes in his bedroom in Malabon, Metro Manila.

Feb. 4, 2013. The skull of the skeleton found at the Grey Friars excavation in Leicester, now confirmed as that of King Richard III.

Feb. 5, 2013. A picture shows "Rex", the world's first "bionic man", during a photo call at the Science Museum in London. The 640,000 GBP (1 million US dollars) humanoid has a distinctly human shape and boasts prosthetic limbs, a functional artificial blood circulatory system complete with artificial blood, as well as an artificial pancreas, kidney, spleen and trachea.

Feb. 5, 2013. A mummified body is seen leaning on niches after it was exhumed at the municipal cemetery in Guatemala City. Municipal employees exhume bodies from niches because of unpaid cemetery fees. The bodies, tagged with identification, are then placed at a mass grave should relatives come back to claim them.

Feb. 5, 2013. Children pour cold water on themselves under the control of fitness coach Margarita Filimonova (R) at local kindergarten number 317, with the air temperature at about minus 23 degrees Celsius (minus 9.4 degrees Fahrenheit), in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

Feb. 8, 2013. Horses are hoisted in the air by a crane as they're transferred from a cargo ship onto a truck upon arrival at a port in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia.

February 12: People dressed as Momotxorro participate in carnival celebrations in Alsasua, Spain

Feb. 14, 2013. Karrie Webb of Australia waits for the kangaroos to clear the fairway during day one of the ISPS Handa Australian Open at Royal Canberra Golf Club in Canberra, Australia.

Feb. 14, 2013. A model poses nude while a girl draws her during a drawing workshop on Valentine's Day in Mexico City.

Feb. 15, 2013. A meteorite contrail is seen over Chelyabinsk. A meteor streaked across the sky of Russiaís Ural Mountains causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people, including many hurt by broken glass.

Feb. 24, 2013. A Sumatran tiger plays with a pig before killing it at the Sumatra Tiger Rescue Centre compound, inside the Tambling Wildlife Nature Conservation (TWNC) near Bandar Lampung, the southern tip of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Feb. 26, 2013. Abayed, a six-year-old herding dog, walks with a specially-made wheeled walking aid outside the Humane Center for Animal Welfare near Amman, Jordan. The dog, whose name means "white", was hospitalized and treated after a bullet pierced his spine and paralyzed him some two years ago.

Feb. 28, 2013. A gorilla hand with painted finger nails in a display of confiscated illegal items by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service law enforcement at their office at BWI in Baltimore, MD.

Feb. 28, 2013. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and former NBA star Dennis Rodman speak at a basketball game in Pyongyang.

March 8, 2013. A supporter of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez holds a doll of him as she stands outside a military academy where the funeral ceremony for Chavez is held in Caracas, Venezula.

Mar. 10, 2013. People sunbathe by the wall of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, Russia.

March 23, 2013. Pope Francis meets Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo in Italy.

March 27, 2013. Ahmed, the 7 year old son of a FSA fighter, stands in front of a barricade, were he assists his FSA comrades in the neighborhood of Salahadeen, one of Aleppo's front lines.

March 28, 2013. A boy poses for a picture with people wearing costumes of famous sci-fi movies during the Canaan fair which is part of the Holy Week celebrations in Ayacucho, Peru.

April 6, 2013. South Africa's Matt Silver-Vallance floats above the sea using helium filled balloons from the airfield of Robben Island across the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Town. Vallance made the 7 km flight to raise funds and awareness for the Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital.

April 9, 2013. A birch gnawed by beavers stands near Lengenwang, southern Germany.

April 11, 2013. Pelicans are to be released into their outdoor enclosure at the birds park in Marlow, eastern Germany.

April 13, 2013. A reveller who had climbed onto a ledge outside the National Gallery leaps into the crowd during an outdoor party celebrating the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at Trafalgar Square in central London.

April 17, 2013. Fifteen-month-old Roona Begum is tended to by doctors and family at a local hospital in Gurgaon on the outskirts of New Delhi. Doctors have successfully carried out life-saving surgery on an Indian baby suffering from a rare disorder that caused her head to swell to nearly double its size, a neurosurgeon told AFP.

April 25, 2013. U.S. Army 1st Lt. Melissa Stockwell (Ret.) (R), who was the first female American soldier to lose a limb in the war in Iraq, recites the Pledge of Allegiance as (L-R) former U.S. First Lady Barbara Bush, former President George H.W. Bush, former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush look on during the opening ceremony of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas.

April 25, 2013. Two victims amid the rubble of a garment factory building collapse in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh.

April 25, 2013. A worker grooms away tracks after an alligator crossed through a sand trap on the 14th hole during the first round of the PGA Tour Zurich Classic golf tournament at TPC Louisiana in Avondale, La.

April 27, 2013. A swarm of red locusts 20km north of the town of Sakaraha, Madagascar.

May 1, 2013. Officials remove a plane part that was discovered wedged between an apartment building and a mosque in New York. Authorities believe the plane part is from one of the two hijacked airliners that brought down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

May 14, 2013. Two Bonobos, pygmy chimpanzees, play with a ball in the new primate house at the Wilhelma Zoological Botanical Gardens in Stuttgart, Germany

May 19, 2013. Masked boys walk to the "Cavalhadas" festival in Pirenopolis, Brazil. The popular festival is a tradition that was introduced in the 1800's by a Portuguese priest to mark the the ascension of Christ. The 3-day festival reenacts the Christian knights' medieval defeat of the Moors.

May 25, 2013. Firefighters and doctors rescue an abandoned newborn baby boy by cutting away a sewage pipe piece by piece, in this still image taken from video, at a hospital in Jinhua, Zhejiang province. Firefighters in eastern China have rescued the abandoned newborn baby boy lodged in the sewage pipe directly beneath a toilet commode, state television reported, in a case which has sparked anger on social media sites.

June 2, 2013. Hombres de Musgo or 'Moss Men' take part in the Corpus Christi procession in Bejar, Salamanca province, Spain. The tradition, which dates back to 1397, originates from a legend involving Christians reconquering the town by entering under cover of darkness covered in moss to camouflage themselves from the Muslim guards. This tradition merged with the Corpus Christi procession in the 14th Century

June 12, 2013. Palestinian boys run from explosions in the field. Children as young as ten are drilled with AK47s and run an obstacle course, crawling under barbed wire and leaping through hoops of fire while their instructors fire live bullets overhead. Thousands of youngsters between the ages of six and 16, can participate in a summer camp where they receive military as well as religious training. Islamic Jihad runs the paramilitary summer camps for 10,000 children.

July 2, 2013. A piglet stands on a dead sow floating in floodwaters in Chongqing, China.

July 3: Nuns of the Monastere de la Consolation in Draguignan cheer as the pack passes during the fifth stage of the Tour de France, raced between Cagnes-sur-Mer and Marseille

July 3, 2013. Tourists play at a beach covered by a thick layer of green algae in Qingdao, China. A large quantity of non-poisonous green seaweed, enteromorpha prolifera, hit the Qingdao coast in recent days. More than 20,000 tons of such seaweed has been removed from the city's beaches.

July 12: A runner is gored by an El Pilar fighting bull during the running of the bulls at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona. An American and two Spaniards were gored Friday during a danger-filled sixth bull run, with one loose bull causing panic in the packed streets of the northern Spanish city. 

July 16, 2013. A monkey plays in a pond surrounded by carps at a wildlife park in Hefei, Anhui province, China.

July 19, 2013. This luckless shark thought he had snapped up a tasty bite only for another shark twice its size to make a meal of it. Students at the University of Delaware's Ocean Exploration, Remote Sensing, Biography (ORB) Lab made the amazing find as they tried to recapture sharks tagged for scientific research. They reeled in the large female sand tiger shark and discovered a 3ft long dogfish inside its mouth.

July 25, 2013. Workers tend to grass on a lawn at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun mausoleum in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Aug. 1, 2013. Fatima, a baby whom Pakistani television talk show host Aamir Liaquat Hussain gave to a childless couple on his show, is held by her adoptive parents at the Chhipa Welfare Association office in Karachi. In a ruthless quest for ratings, Pakistani television is screening what many describe as its most controversial content yet: a talk-show host who gives away babies as prizes. Hussain gave away two abandoned infant girls to childless families last month and plans to give away a baby boy this week.

Aug. 27, 2013. Colombia's dancers Juan David Bedoya Marin and Karla Rotavinsky Cadavid dance tango during the Stage Tango competition of the Tango World Championship in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Sept. 4, 2013. Crowds gather as a television crew try to fry an egg as the sun glares down from a new office building in the financial district in London, England. The concave side wall of the 37-storey skyscraper at 20 Fenchurch Street, known locally as the 'Walkie Talkie' building, has been blamed for reflecting the intense sunlight that we have been experiencing of late onto a nearby street.

Sept. 6, 2013. A frog is captured during a lift off of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Sept. 9, 2013. Protesters demonstrating against corruption simulate the burial of city councilor Chiquinho Brazao, in front of the city hall in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Sept. 14, 2013. Mandira Budhathoki, 7, poses for a photograph in Kharay, Dolkha District, some 190 km (118 miles) northeast of Kathmandu, Nepal. Devi Budhathoki and three of her children, Manjura, Mandira, and Niraj all suffer from Congenital Hypertrichosis Lanuginosa, a very rare disease that causes excessive body hair growth, and which is sometimes

Sept. 18, 2013. A Kurdish Free Syrian Army fighter holds out a doll while his fellow fighter takes shooting position in Ashrafieh, Aleppo, Syria.

Sept. 21, 2013. This 18-month-old long-tail Persian moggy called Daisy has the mane of a lion, little fluffy feet and even sports a pom-pom-like tail. According to her owners, since being shaved by the vet to rid her of her tangled hair, Daisy has even started to take on

Sept. 26, 2013. A boy plays in a Chinese traditional pavilion next to an inflated Rubber Duck by Dutch conceptual artist Florentijn Hofman at the Summer Palace in Beijing.

Oct. 1, 2013. Tom the tiger, the pet of Aryas Borges, is pictured with the family chihuahua in Maringa, Brazil.

October 10: A devotee of the Chinese Bang Neow Shrine has a blade pierced through his cheek before the beginning of a street procession during the annual Vegetarian Festival in Phuket.

Oct. 14, 2013. Ecology professor Ricardo Freitas, wearing camouflage barefoot sport shoes, sits on top of a broad-snouted caiman he captured to examine and then release back into the water channel in the affluent Recreio dos Bandeirantes suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Oct. 18, 2013. Veterinarians operate on a Galapagos green turtle (Chelonia mydas agassisi) to extract a fishhook from its esophagus in San Salvador, El Salvador.

Nov. 16, 2013. A demonstrator kisses a riot police officer during a protest in Susa against the high-speed train (TAV in Italian) line between Lyon and Turin. The link, expected to come into service in 2025, will see one million fewer trucks on the highways a year, and reduce train times between Paris and Milan from seven hours to just over four.

December 17: In a photo taken Dec. 4 and distributed today, Xiao Wei's severed right hand is seen attached to his ankle before reattachment surgery at Xiangya Hospital in Changsha, China. Xiao Wei's hand was cut off in an accident during his work at a factory and was grafted to his leg for a month before the reattachment surgery. (Xiangya Hospital, Central South University)

December 21: Visitors take a picture of Christmas illuminations lit by 280,000 LED lights, at the Tokyo Midtown business and commercial complex .

December 27: Astronaut Mike Hopkins, Expedition 38 Flight Engineer, is shown in this handout photo distributed today by NASA as he participates in the second of two spacewalks which took place on December 24. The scheduled spacewalks were designed to allow the crew to change out a faulty water pump on the exterior of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. He was joined on both spacewalks by NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, whose image shows up in Hopkins' helmet visor.

December 28: A winter swimmer gestures as he jumps into the icy water of the partially frozen Songhua River in Harbin, China. The temperature in Harbin on Saturday reached as low as minus 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 21 degrees Celsius).

December 28: Visitors walk past a giant snow sculpture ahead of the 30th Harbin Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin, China.

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Oct. 3, 2013. A python lies on an orangutan on the eve of World Animal Day at the Malabon Zoo in Malabon City, the Philippines.