Week in wildlife in pictures: roving parrots, rabid seals and a prickly pest

Raccoons lounging at the Cinta Costera on Panama City’s waterfront. The animals congregate in the capital city looking for food, which has become scarce due to the destruction of their habitats

A hummingbird hawk moth hovers near flowers decorating the area around the holy remains of Saint Dimitar Basarbovski, the patron saint of the Romanian capital, at the end of a religious procession in Bucharest, Romania

Two parrots missing from London zoo have been found after being spotted 60 miles away near a family’s back garden. The escaped blue-throated macaws, named Lily and Margot, did not return to their enclosure after their usual routine of flying freely, and were subsequently missing for six days. Finally zookeepers tracked them down in Cambridgeshire, and reported that the parrots flew into their arms

A Dominican hicotea turtle at a botanical garden in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic

Brown fur seals in Cape Town, South Africa. There has been an outbreak of rabies in the seals – the first known outbreak of rabies among marine mammals. Scientists suspect they may have contracted the disease from infected jackals who hunt seal pups on the coast of Namibia

A quick-thinking ranger jumps into the back of a truck which pulls away as a young bear attempts to attack him. The two-year-old bear (named Ricky after Ricky Gervais) had been hit by a vehicle and rehabilitated. It was being released into the wild in Armenia

A swan swims in Swan Lake in Stryiskyi Park, Lviv, western Ukraine

A squirrel eats an acorn in Seğmenler Park in Çankaya, Turkey

A polar bear and a cub search for scraps in a large pile of bowhead whale bones left from the village’s subsistence hunting near Kaktovik, on the northern coast of Alaska, US

A monitor lizard at Lumphini Park in Bangkok, Thailand

An Asiatic golden cat walking in the central Cardamom mountains in southwestern Cambodia. Camera traps have captured several endangered species inhabiting Cambodia’s highly threatened Cardamom mountains for the first time, highlighting the need to protect the area, where several dams have been built recently

An Asian elephant walking in the central Cardamom mountains, Cambodia

A hedgehog curls up in a garden in Rolleston on the outskirts of Christchurch, New Zealand. As hedgehogs have no natural predators in New Zealand, they are considered a pest because they kill a variety of insects, lizards, and ground-nesting chicks, reducing biodiversity. In Europe, however, hedgehogs are now listed as “near threatened” after a decline in numbers of at least 30% over the past decade across much of their range

A grey heron fishes on a lake in a city park in Tallinn, Estonia

An Indian sloth bear enjoys a Halloween snack at an International Animal Rescue centre in India. Its nose was damaged by cruel practices inflicted by poachers who put the animals on show as ‘“dancing bears”

A hummingbird, the purple-throated woodstar, seen on a birdwatching trip as part of the Cop16 summit in Cali, Colombia. Humanity faces an “existential crisis” caused by its rapacious destruction of life-sustaining nature, UN chief António Guterres warned delegates at the biodiversity summit in Colombia

Baby sea turtles being released into the Mediterranean near Ortaca, southwestern Turkey

A butterfly sits on a branch in Nafplion, Peloponnese, Greece

Five black swan cygnets take their first swim with the help of their mother, in Kuğulu Park, Ankara, Turkey