Cats are distinctive animals: domesticated for centuries, revered and reviled in equal measure throughout history and bred to match our own aesthetic tastes and whims.听 From a sensational internet fluffball to his own domestic longhair Loki, renowned animal photographer Tim Flach explores the world of cats in his new book , showing how intertwined our lives have become.

鈥淎t the heart of this project was to unmask the essence of feline,鈥� says Flach. Including more than 170 of Flach鈥檚 cat images, Feline also sees neuroscientist Morten Kringelbach explore why we find felines so compelling, and evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos delve into the species and its evolution.

Pictured above is Stella, a Cornish Rex from Montreal, Canada, whose striking appearance is a result of genetic quirks during her embryonic development. Cats with different-coloured eyes almost always have one blue eye, writes Losos. The phenomenon is particularly common in entirely white cats.

Flach also includes shots of feline internet sensations such as Atchoum, below, a long-haired Persian with a rare condition called hypertrichosis, which causes his hair to grow profusely. Currently, Atchoum has more than 900,000 followers on Instagram.

Elsewhere, Zuu, an exotic shorthair, takes cuteness to the extreme 鈥� a perfectly round fluffball that鈥檚 impossible to resist (below).

Cuteness, writes Kringelbach in Feline, is how mammalian and avian babies elicit care from elders, compensating for their helplessness. Big eyes, rounded features and large heads are typical baby features that humans (and many other species) find irresistible, and have been shown to trigger activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, an emotion-processing region of the brain. The idea is that if our brains reward us for looking at and providing for babies, it makes it easier for our species to survive. But this response is not restricted to our own species. Cats, too, trigger this same reward zone in humans.

By scanning his own brain as it responds to Loki, his domestic longhair, Flach highlights the cuteness effect and how his orbitofrontal cortex lights up within 130 milliseconds, much faster than conscious thought. 鈥淚n a way, at some fundamental level, you can see how cuteness is unfolding,鈥� he says.

But cuteness is just one of cats鈥� evolutionary advantages.听 They are perfectly adapted for a life of hunting 鈥� as demonstrated by this 8-week Sphynx cat Valentine, below, which is leaping for a cat toy just out of sight.

A cat鈥檚 nose has as many as 40 times more scent-detecting cells than a human鈥檚. Cats鈥� whiskers are finely tuned to detect subtle vibrations, helpful for moving in the dark and hunting at close range. Their tongues, too, are uniquely fashioned. Covering the organ are small papillae, or spikes, made of keratin 鈥� the same material as in our nails and hair.听 This roughness is useful in grooming, eating and drinking. But the tongue also plays a role in cats鈥� sense of smell, transferring pheromone scents to the vomeronasal, or Jacobson鈥檚, organ at the roof of the mouth.

But it is cats鈥� eyes that are perhaps their most alluring feature. In the past, superstition suggested that a cat鈥檚 bright eyes were indicative of a devil glowing back. In reality, the glowing orbs that shine back at you if you point a light at a cat in the dark are the result of special reflective cells known as tapetum lucidum, which reflect unabsorbed light back to the photoreceptors (rods and cones) in the retina. Cats have a much greater density of rods than humans, and are also able to widely dilate their pupils, enabling them to see at light levels six times lower than humans, writes Losos in his book.

To capture cats鈥� eyes for Feline, Flach and his team used special lenses and high-speed flash to show them in ways never before seen, to 鈥渟how it almost like a lighthouse light, like a mirror鈥�, says Flach.

Nearly two centuries ago, botanist and pioneering photographer Anna Atkins鈥榮 influential book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype impressions, wowed readers with its scientific power and artistry. In it, Atkins presented images of seaweed collected from British shorelines made using the cyanotype method, a printing process carried out by laying objects on chemically coated paper and exposing it to ultraviolet light, creating a cyan-blue backdrop.

In artist Mandy Barker鈥檚 new book, , she uses the same technique to draw attention to the ongoing pollution crisis facing our oceans. Like Atkins, Barker also scoured the British coastline. Rather than finding natural beauty, however, she saw discarded clothing washing up onto the beaches. Her first find, she says, looked like seaweed. 鈥淚t was kind of an attractive, beautiful piece of cloth.鈥� But as pieces of jackets, dresses, shoes, underwear and school uniforms started appearing, the scale of the problem quickly became apparent to her.

Inspired by the clothes鈥� similar shape to seaweed, Barker decided to create new cyanotype prints (pictured top) from this found fabric (pictured above, not in the book) to replicate Atkins鈥檚 work, with small but significant changes. She draws attention to the climate costs associated with fast fashion by inventing Latin names for the garments, such as Delesseria tunica ictus 鈥� a nod to both the shirt she found and a genus of red algae that Atkins photographed.

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IN A flooded cave system in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on the Yucat谩n peninsula, a manatee mother (pictured above) swims up to cave diver , who captured stunning images of these endangered mammals living in a unique, under-explored habitat. 鈥淥f course, I think she鈥檚 looking at me,鈥� says Thymann. 鈥淏ut the reality is she鈥檚 probably looking at the reflection in the camera.鈥�

Carved into limestone rock by flowing water, the cave system, thought to be up to 16,000 kilometres long, links the coast with inland cenotes, freshwater-filled sinkholes created when cave roofs collapse. Thymann and his fellow divers have been exploring this system (pictured above) to film manatees, which, unlike the humans, navigate the passages with ease.

The manatees have probably been in the region for generations, says Thymann, yet there are estimated to be fewer than 250 of them in the Mexican Caribbean. Thymann is concerned that construction projects nearby are putting the area鈥檚 aquatic species at risk. A new train line will bring even more development to the popular tourist destination (pictured above). Construction can block the flow of water in the system, starving it of oxygen and potentially trapping manatees. Wastewater from surface run-off and sewage systems lowers the water quality in the area鈥檚 aquifer.

Though the coastal area is a protected manatee sanctuary, this doesn鈥檛 extend inland, where these manatees were photographed. So, while finding manatees within a relatively untouched cave network is positive news, these habitats may not remain so pristine for much longer.

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Explore the world of these manatees in our mini documentary

AN ENORMOUS Jurassic pliosaur skull extracted from a cliff in Dorset, UK, is offering scientists a wealth of new information about these sea reptiles. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very likely a new species,鈥� says Judyth Sassoon at the University of Bristol, UK.

The fossil was the subject of a new documentary, , which premiered on BBC One on 1 January and will air on PBS in the US in February. The skull is so well preserved that CT scans revealed the sensory pits on the snout (pictured above) were connected to blood vessels and nerves, allowing the pliosaur to detect changes in pressure and hunt prey in murky waters (pictured below, in a CGI image from the documentary).

There is hope that the rest of the fossil is still intact in the cliff. 鈥淭here may be evidence on its skeleton of how it met its death,鈥� says Steve Etches, who led the team to extract and prepare the skull. Etches is shown below, examining the snout with David Attenborough, left, in a still from the documentary.

Surface scans of the specimen have helped scientists estimate the strength of its bite. Emily Rayfield, a palaeontologist at the University of Bristol, suggests its bite force would have been twice that of a saltwater crocodile, one of the most powerful known bites. Evidence of trihedral teeth, with two sharp cutting edges and striated grooves, is shown below.

The grooves are believed to stop a vacuum forming when the teeth are plunged into prey, allowing the pliosaur to repeatedly and swiftly bite down, and further cementing its place as one of the deadliest predators of its time. The skull is on show at the Etches Collection in Dorset, UK.