Week in wildlife: a piggybacking mouse, heart-shaped vultures and our smallest otter

A harvest mouse was caught enjoying an unusual form of transport – riding a snail in a rainy garden in Norfolk, UK

Sleeping beauty … rangers in Upemba national park, Democratic Republic of Congo, mount a GPS collar on a tranquillised elephant. The park covers about 11,650 sq km (4,500 sq miles), making it nearly as big as Lincolnshire and Norfolk put together. About 200 elephants live there, despite threats from militants and poachers

Love is in the air … vultures fly over the decomposed body of an unseen animal in Jammu, India

A winged red aphid sucks on a branch, with nymphs (babies) below, in New York, US. Gardeners will not be surprised to learn that female nymphs can be born pregnant, enabling the species to multiply rapidly

A crested ibis, an endangered bird species once believed to be extinct in China, is released into the wild in Muchuan county, Sichuan – one of 12 that were reintroduced last month

Young offender … conservationists band four-week-old peregrine falcon chicks with metal tags on their ankles at the Union county courthouse in Elizabeth, New Jersey, US

A spiny lizard in the forested area of Cerro de la Muerte, Costa Rica

Visitors to the Lake District are being asked to look out for this butterfly, the mountain ringlet, to help scientists protect the rare species. Living exclusively on mountains, it is more commonly found in Scotland than in England, where conservationists say it is so hard to find that they have yet to discover whether numbers are going up or down

A magnificent hummingbird prepares to dine in Cerro de la Muerte, Costa Rica

Silk webbing from bird-cherry ermine caterpillars covers trees and shrubs along Waterloo Road in Beeston, Nottinghamshire

Buried treasure … an Asian small-clawed otter emerges from the sand in Nepal. The world’s smallest otter, it had not been seen in the region for 185 years and was thought to be extinct, but one was photographed in February, to the delight of conservationists

An extreme closeup of a spider in Cerro de la Muerte, Costa Rica

A great blue heron joins spectators waiting to watch the SpaceX Starship rocket launch from Starbase, Texas, US

Close call … a hornet walks along the edge of a carnivorous pitcher plant at the Carolina Beach state park, North Carolina, US

Members of South Africa’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals watch an elephant seal who had strayed onto a street in Gordon’s Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa. A team of marine wildlife specialists and a city veterinarian sedated the seal and took it back to the ocean

A privet strider (a kind of sawfly) sits on a leaf in Toronto, Canada

Fur baby … a bear cub that was found all alone in Los Padres national forest, California, sleeps at a San Diego wildlife centre. Biologists hope they can return him to the wilderness next year, provided he can learn to find food, seek shelter and avoid people

A black swallowtail butterfly alights on a purple coneflower in the small town of Waynesville, Illinois, US

Flamingos in the Akgöl wetlands, Turkey

Grey seals show their playful side while swimming off the English coast, UK