Week in wildlife in pictures: chilly pelicans, a baby gorilla and a spider fan’s dream come true

Pelicans rest on a rock in the lake in St James’s Park, London, during last week’s cold snap across the UK. The lake would have been frozen over if not for the fountain. Six great white pelicans live in the park and are free to come and go as they please

A swan also looks a bit perplexed at a frozen lake in Kidderminster, UK

Emperor penguins form an orderly queue as breeding season begins in Antarctica

Lexi, a Syrian brown bear, preparing for her first hibernation in the wild in Armenia. Lexi was discovered alone as a cub, crying in the branches of a tree, with her mother nowhere to be seen. She underwent extensive rehabilitation but with barely any human contact. In December she was released back into the wild

This five-month-old male gorilla infant was rescued from the cargo hold of a plane at Istanbul Airport. He was found in a wooden box on a flight from Nigeria to Thailand. Named Zeytin (which means Olive), he is recovering well from his ordeal in the care of staff at Turkish zoo

A hopeful red fox hunts in a snowy field in Kars, Turkey

A great blue heron catches a large vole before gulping it down in a roadside pasture near Elkton in rural southwestern Oregon, US. Herons usually eat aquatic prey (fish, shellfish, insects and so on), but in winter, some herons adapt by hunting rodents when rain-swollen rivers are running high and fast

Bats cling on to the ceiling of a wooden hut at the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve in Singapore

A rabbit looks for food in an area burned by the Palisades fire, in Los Angeles, California, US

Reindeer walk the road in Kvaløya, an island in northern Norway

Volunteers clean up a bird drenched with oil after two tankers were damaged in a storm in the Kerch strait, which leads off the Black sea, in southern Russia

A drone view shows manatees enjoying the warm-water outflows of Florida Power & Light Company’s power station in West Palm Beach, Florida, US. Researchers have recently found that manatees are relative newcomers, having only been present in the region for about 200 years

A long-eared owl perches on a tree in Nagyhegyes, north-eastern Hungary

Seagulls pose for the camera at the Baltic Sea in Scharbeutz, northern Germany

A sea turtle recovers on a care barge off Tunisia’s Kerkennah Island, in the Mediterranean. Harbouring netted enclosures underwater, the barge is used to treat injured loggerhead turtles, allowing the threatened species to receive care in saltwater, its natural habitat. It is the first floating rehabilitation centre for the species

Flamingoes feed at a beach in Kuwait City, Kuwait

Kane Christensen, former head of spiders at the Australian Reptile Park, looks at a new species of funnel web spider that has been named after him, at the Australian Museum in Sydney: Atrax christenseni, nicknamed Big Boy

A picturesque robin puffs up its feathers against the cold at the Bois de Vincennes park in eastern Paris, France

Gazelles graze near the Israel-Gaza border

A crocodile swims in a river at the Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve in Singapore

Pink flamingos are reflected in water at sunset in the Camargue natural park in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, southern France

A stoat stands to attention on the shores of Kerkini lake, Greece