Photography: Panda: Back From the Brink, By Zhou Mengqi

The panda is officially the cutest member of the animal kingdom, but it is critically endangered (approximately 1,500 survive in the wild and there are a further 300 in captivity), which is why it has become the familiar face of the conservation movement.

It has also been of inestimable symbolic value to China, and made useful diplomatic gifts (from whence the awkward neologism "pandaplomacy"). This wonderful and informative book by the photographer Zhou Mengqi acknowledges these symbolisms, but primarily it returns the panda to the wild: here we see this rather shy, and in many ways still mysterious, animal in its natural habitat. As cute as ever.