Veterinarians at work: From domestic cats to lions and boa constrictors

It's not just humans who need to get their regular check-ups. Animals nneed to see a doctor every once in a while too, to make sure everything is as it should be. Here, lioness Julie is attended to by a veterinary surgeon at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in the UK. She's getting an ultrasound to have her gastrointestinal tract checked.

Veterinarians also need to make sure that baby animals born in zoos are healthy. This little lion was born at the Copenhagen Zoological Garden in Denmark. The vets determined the gender of the four sibling cubs, an important factor when it comes to breeding and deciding which animals the zoo keeps, and which it passes on to other parks.

Not something you see every day: This boa constrictor is examined at the veterinary clinic of the Ministry of the Environment in El Salvador's capital, San Salvador. Animals found by people or seized by the police are taken to the clinic and checked by vets before they're reintegrated into their natural habitats.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we've been told time and again that the best protection against the virus is to get vaccinated. Many zoos across the world applied that to their animals as well. In January 2022, orangutan Sandai received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at the Buin Zoo in Chile.

Veterinarians play important roles for entire communities. On Lamu island, Kenya, donkeys have been bred for decades to provide transportation for people and goods. While motorcycles are becoming more important, the donkeys are still part of the island's everyday life. This one was treated for a leg injury.

Cows' owners pick out the bull whose DNA they think is going to make for the best offspring. Then a veterinarian, or "inseminator," places a medical device with a portion of the chosen bull's sperm inside the cow's uterus ― by going through the rectum. If things go well, a calf is born roughly 280 days later.

Some wild animals need to be tranquilized before a veterinarian can even come close. It could be to keep the animals still while they're chipped for tracking purposes, or while they undergo a necessary health procedure or, as in this case, for transport. Kenyan wildlife services relocated this and other black rhinoceroses in an effort to repopulate certain habitats.

A vet is preparing to intubate this sea turtle ahead of a surgery to remove a fishing hook from the animal's oesophagus on the French island of Corsica. Many marine animals suffer severe health consequences as the fishing industry intrudes into their habitats.

The 2019 summer bushfire season in Australia was devastating. Many endangered animal species were severely affected by the fires. On Kangaroo Island, an estimated 90% of the koala population died in the flames. This baby koala was saved and treated at the Kangaroo Island Veterinary Clinic.

Vets use some of the same machinery for their patients as doctors do for humans. Here, a striped owl is having a CT scan at a veterinary clinic in Envigado, Colombia. Vets wanted to find out whether it had recovered from a previous infection. The illness was caused by common mould spores and affected the owl's the respiratory system.

Meet Monika. The dog was rescued by volunteers and had to have all four limbs amputated. Vets at a clinic in Novosibirsk, Russia, fitted her with titanium prosthetics. The complex procedure was expensive and Monika didn't have an owner. But a number of strangers jumped in and financed everything via crowdfunding. Now Monika has a new lease on life.