Zack woke early and hiked to a nearby lake to see the sunrise. It had barely rained for six months and the lake had receded in the drought, leaving massive tiles of dried mud around the water’s edge. With his lens close to the ground, Zack used a technique called focus stacking, combining multiple images to achieve this single photograph.
The southwestern USA recently experienced its driest period since the 1500s. The temporary habitats created by such severe droughts can pose problems for animals that need to cross the exposed mudflats to access water. As droughts become increasingly extreme due to warmer temperatures caused by climate change, impacts may be felt more widely.

The monkey puzzle trees, or Chilean pines, stood tall against a backdrop of late-autumn forest. Andrea hiked for hours to a ridge and waited for the perfect light, just after sunset, to capture this scene’s colours. The trunks gleamed like scattered pins on the landscape, the whole world clothed in the strange forest fabric.
Typically found in parts of Chile and Argentina, monkey puzzle trees sometimes live for more than 1,000 years. With their thick, protective bark and specially adapted buds, these trees are able to withstand milder forest fires. Yet they are now endangered, at risk from land clearance and larger fires as their habitat becomes hotter and drier.

Fascinated by crows’ artful nests, Yosuke was keen to photograph the birds’ habits without disturbing them. His chance arose when this nest was removed as a hazard by municipal workers. Coat hangers scavenged from balconies had been arranged among the twigs and twine. To reveal the design without distraction, Yosuke laid a black cloth beneath the nest.
City-living wildlife – and crows particularly – are opportunistic. They make the most of what they find, often with intriguing results. Many urban birds use human-made materials for their nests, which, however unusual to look at, can sometimes cause issues. For instance, clashes between the crows’ metal architecture and city power cables may result in blackouts.

Lorenzo was determined, having devoted six months to finding the perfect spot from which to photograph wolves. After securing his camera trap to a tree, he spent hours adjusting the settings to include the mountain backdrop. As these wolves loped along a regular route, their coats a mirror of the surroundings, Lorenzo achieved this atmospheric shot.
In recent years, the wolf population across the Italian Alps has been increasing slowly. Yet these iconic carnivores are not universally welcomed. Fear and concern about livestock are factors, as is a lack of understanding about the wolf’s vital role in the ecosystem. By preying on large herbivores like deer, wolves control their numbers, thus allowing vegetation to grow.

Looking up, Max was astonished to see a tayra peering down at him. He had occasionally encountered these elusive mammals bounding along the forest floor, yet this one was high in a Panama rubber tree, picking fruit with its teeth. Aiming his camera straight up to the clouds, Max captured this rare shot.
Roughly the size of a small dog, tayras are mustelids – a family that includes badgers, wolverines and weasels. Tayras are omnivorous and eat a wide range of food, from small mammals, fruit and invertebrates to reptiles, birds and carrion. They also have a liking for honey.

Floating in the dark sea during his night dive, Songda waited for something interesting to photograph. Then he spotted this diamondback squid. Using his underwater lighting, Songda revealed the squid’s head and the membranous fringes of its suckered arms. A long exposure allowed the passing animal to paint its own path across the frame.
Diamondback squid are normally slow movers, gliding unhurriedly through the water. But they can also produce a burst of jet-propulsion speed by contracting the soft, muscular cavity around their body – the mantle – and forcing water out through a funnel. They can then direct the jet by moving the funnel, accelerating towards prey or away from predators.

While diving, Sam stopped to watch a group of clownfish dart around a magnificent sea anemone – an animal related to jellyfish. Sam was intrigued by the expression of this particular fish, which kept its mouth open. Only when he downloaded his photos did he see the tiny eyes peeping out from within. Sam’s shot revealed three different, but interconnected, life forms.
This fish had a tongue-eating louse in its mouth – a parasite that attaches itself to the base of a host’s tongue in order to suck blood. In the wild, clownfish are found living among the tentacles of a host sea anemone, which protects them and their developing eggs. In return, the fish remove debris from the sea anemone’s surface and chase away predatory butterflyfish.

One summer evening, Csaba waited for the last birds of the day near his woodland pond. As dusk fell, a blackbird flew in and stood alert for a few seconds – long enough for Csaba to compose this minimalist portrait. The bird’s bright beak and eye-ring penetrated the darkness, its form barely visible in the shadows.
The Eurasian blackbird has large eyes relative to its body size – a trait that allows it to find food at low light levels. Its eyes are positioned on the sides of its head, which gives it excellent peripheral vision. As a result, it must cock its head to catch sight of prey. Originally woodland birds, blackbirds now visit forests, farmland and gardens.

Fred’s family visits the same park every summer. Out with his camera one evening, he caught sight of a badger feeding in the open. Despite badgers more typically being found in the undergrowth, Fred was keen to photograph this one against a ‘clean background’, so he crept closer. After half an hour of stalking, his shoes soaked in dew, Fred’s wish came true.
The European badger uses its long claws to dig for earthworms, which can comprise a large portion of its diet. Omnivorous and resourceful, however, the badger adapts its intake depending on the season and on what it can find. Dietary options include insects, small mammals, birds, fruit and human food waste.

Arshdeep asked to join his father’s business trip to Vietnam after reading about the endangered red-shanked douc langur that lives there. He had just three days at the nature reserve and only on the last day did a douc appear in a nearby tree. Arshdeep managed to shoot clear of the leaves, capturing this fleeting glance.
These striking primates are found only in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, distinguished by their bright red ‘stockings’. They live in either families or larger groups. During the cooler hours of the day, doucs will forage for leaves, flowers and fruit. Loss of habitat and hunting threaten their future.

Matthew spent several years photographing the foxes that live on an allotment near his home. On this particular evening, as some of the younger foxes were at play, one ran out of the bushes with a dead rat in its mouth. The others began squabbling over the rodent and a tug-of-war developed. Flashing a determined stare, this fox held tight to its trophy.
With their long, narrow jaws and thin canine teeth, foxes are adapted to hunt small rodents, including juvenile rats. Adult rats are a more daunting prospect as they can inflict serious injury. Urban foxes, rather than hunting rodents, often consume food they scavenge from human populations.

These birds – albatrosses and white-chinned petrels – were fatally attracted to the rich pickings of longline fishing boats. However, the display Thomas photographed actually illustrates a conservation success story. In 2017, there was a reduction in the number of seabirds caught and killed on longlines set by Japanese tuna-fishing boats in the waters around South Africa.
In longline fishing, baited hooks are trailed on lines through the water. When small seabirds pull the hooks up to the surface to snatch the bait, larger birds often hijack their efforts, sometimes hooking themselves and drowning. Improved fishing practices mean that, off South Africa’s coast, fewer birds now suffer this fate. Yet over 300,000 a year are still killed by longlines globally.

In the rainforest, this macaque would have lived in a large group.
Paul found it sitting alone, chained to a cage, at an Indonesian animal market. He was only allowed to photograph it when the trader believed he was interested in making a purchase. The young macaque was perhaps later sold as a pet, to a zoo, for biomedical research or to be eaten.

The fallen tree, bridging a small river, shouted ‘wildlife highway’ to Charlie. He spent weeks perfecting the set-up of his camera trap so that it would reveal elusive species in daylight as they emerged from the forest and crossed the bridge. Over several months, he captured images of many animals, including this handsome ocelot, the early morning light brightening its face.
Osa is one of the few places in Central America that can still boast five species of wild cat – among them the ocelot, puma and jaguar. Yet these animals are under pressure from habitat fragmentation and loss of prey. A special network of camera traps is monitoring the cats’ habits and behaviour in order to better understand their conservation needs.

Hunting in a snow-covered valley, this American red fox was hit side-on by a gust of wind, its thick winter coat parting to reveal its fine fur underlayer. John watched the fox for hours – withstanding the windy weather and sudden drops in temperature – to take this stark image of a winter survivor.
With its winter coat, the red fox is well equipped for cold conditions. It can survive in a variety of habitats and has a remarkable ability to adapt, supported by its broad diet. After humans, red foxes have the largest natural range of any mammal found on land.

Sergey had never set eyes on a wild tiger when he resolved to photograph one in the east of Russia. He found his ideal setting, minus the cat, and hid his camera on a tree. A few days later, a young Amur, or Siberian, tiger gave Sergey the portrait he had hoped for, the colours of its coat harmonising with the surroundings.
Russia’s remote eastern taiga forests, or ‘snow forests’, are this cat’s northernmost reach, home to the Amur tiger. There is a small population in neighbouring China and it is uncertain whether there are any left in North Korea. While the number of these tigers in Russia dropped to around 20 or 30 in the 1930s, it has grown following conservation and a ban on poaching.

Peter knew the leopard was crouched behind a bush, surveying an adult warthog and its piglet. As rain started to fall, the two warthogs were briefly distracted and the leopard began to move. ‘The piglet didn’t stand a chance,’ says Peter. The adult warthog attempted to charge, but in vain. The leopard snatched its meal and disappeared up a tree.
Combining strength and speed, the leopard is a formidable hunter. Once it seizes its prey, it may hoist the catch up a tree to store and eat later, away from competing predators like lions and hyenas. Given the chance, a warthog is also capable of speed and could even injure a leopard with its four sharp tusks.

Approaching a herd of Tibetan gazelle, a pack of Himalayan wolves split up and encircled its prey. But the gazelle quickly scattered. Haiyuan tracked the wolves for the next two hours, watching them repeatedly attempt to infiltrate the herd. Finally, they isolated a youngster. The scene then became a chase, the hunters taking turns to run down the gazelle.
The wolves that live at high altitudes across the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau can tolerate low oxygen levels and extreme cold, though research is needed to uncover exactly how they are adapted to such habitats. Meanwhile, gazelle are in decline due to illegal hunting, competition with domestic livestock, and development taking place on their home ranges.

Out on a night dive, Songda saw all sorts of larvae and tiny animals migrate up from the depths of the ocean, under cover of darkness, to feed on surface-dwelling phytoplankton, or microalgae. Then came this magnificent diamondback squid. It hovered beneath Songda for just a moment, basking in his nightlight, before disappearing in a flash of gold.
The squid pictured was just a hatchling, but, like an adult, it propelled itself with undulations of its triangular fins, sprinting away when faced with danger. Special organs in a diamondback squid’s skin – chromatophores – contain sacs of pigment that allow the animal to change colour. Other organs can reflect and scatter light.

This short-finned pilot whale was left unable to swim after its tail was severed by a boat propeller and its body attacked by sharks. In the water, Francis could hear the injured whale’s cries, as well as those of its family group, which circled protectively. ‘It was the saddest day of my career,’ says Francis, who has photographed marine life for 20 years.
These deep waters host more than 20 whale and dolphin species. With increasing boat tourism and no speeding regulations, propeller strikes are a constant threat, especially to pilot whales, which recover from long, tiring dives at the water’s surface. Speed restrictions can reduce collisions.

‘Nodding donkeys’, or pumpjacks, drive the deep, underground pumps in California’s densest oil field. Andrew took this photograph from three kilometres away, the compression of his telephoto lens emphasising the concentration of machines. The graphic scene has an otherworldly feel: an alien landscape crawling with insect-like robots and attendant electricity poles.
Although more than two billion barrels of oil have been produced at Kern River, the remaining supply is more difficult and energy-intensive to extract. Due to falling oil prices, many Californian wells are now idle or abandoned. Unless properly treated, they will leave a toxic legacy, leaking methane and contaminating the air and groundwater.

Jaime walked for four hours to reach this location, determined to share his passion for glass frogs. He was thrilled to catch sight of one eating a spider, its eyes like shimmering mosaics. Serenaded by a frog chorus in torrential rain, Jaime claimed the first-ever picture of this species feeding.
Distinguished by the yellow spots on its back and the lack of webbing between its fingers, the Manduriacu frog is found only in a small area in the foothills of the Andes. It is threatened by habitat loss and environmental contamination associated with cattle ranching, agriculture and mining. This frog could soon face extinction.

This gang of weaver ants climbed higher, hauling a feather that would perhaps be eaten as a valuable source of protein. Ripan spotted the ants’ destination overhead – a football-sized nest at the end of a branch – and noted the level of effort it would take for the insects to reach it. He approached cautiously and used a wide-angle lens to capture their endeavours.
A weaver ant colony may number half a million ants and can occupy multiple nests among the branches of a tree. It is ruled by a single, egg-laying queen ant. The workforce comprises smaller workers, who look after the colony’s brood, and slightly larger workers, who hunt for food and protect the nests, which are made using larvae silk.

Waiting in the car, Matthew spotted this moose in the snow. As it approached him, Matthew’s chance for a creative portrait came when the moose paused to drink from a puddle. Every few seconds, the animal looked around, its head contrasted against its dark, wet fur. Matthew experimented with shutter speeds to capture both the snowfall and the details of the moose’s face.
The moose, or elk, is the largest living species of the deer family, known for its long, unmistakable muzzle. It also has long legs, which help it stride through snow. Particularly heavy snowfalls, however, can make progress slow and attack from grey wolves more likely. The moose is adapted for freezing conditions in winter when it grows a thick, insulating undercoat.

When Espen saw two Svalbard rock ptarmigans pause to rest on the jagged slopes, he dismounted his snowmobile and began to crawl towards them. Taking a wide angle, he framed the birds in their rocky landscape, the wind-blown ridges enhancing his composition. The monochrome scene was broken by small bursts of colour from the lichens.
This rock ptarmigan is the only land bird that lives all year round in Svalbard – a group of islands between Norway and the North Pole. In their white winter plumage, rock ptarmigans are almost invisible. They are threatened by climate change as pink-footed geese, which compete with them for habitat and food, are thriving due to warmer temperatures.

Up to his chest in water, Jose Luis shot this intimate moment with a family of great crested grebes. When one parent emerged with damp feathers and a fish, Jose Luis was lucky that not a breath of wind rippled the water. A stripy-headed chick stretched out of its sanctuary, open-beaked, to claim the tasty meal.
Grebes are at their most elegant in the breeding season when ornate plumage is used in courting. They build a nest of aquatic plant material, often among reeds at the edge of shallow water. Chicks venture out within just a few hours of hatching, hitching a snug ride on a parent’s back.

Evie longed to see puffins, so, when school broke up, she and her family took a two-day trip to witness the birds in their habitat. She set up her camera by the puffins’ burrows, noticing the adults returning with mouthfuls of sand eels for their young, and then decided to concentrate her observations on this pair with its vibrant breeding coloration.
Atlantic puffins form pairs for several years, sometimes even for life. During the breeding season, they have black ‘eyeliner’ and brightly coloured bills. Bill size and colour are major attractors to potential mates. Puffins worldwide are in decline: climate disruption has reduced the availability of sand eels – a staple of their diet.

Although the leopard-frequented forest could be ‘terrifying’, it was the perfect place for Aishwarya to look for fireflies. After two hours of hiking, she found a tree dusted in gold from the bioluminescence of thousands of fireflies. Shooting 27 images over a 24-second exposure and combining them using focusstacking software, she highlighted the vibrancy of this scene.
Fireflies are a type of winged beetle that use light to lure potential mates. Of the many species, each has a distinct pattern and intensity of light in order to recognise its own kind. Fireflies are affected globally by habitat destruction and light pollution, which can make them lose track of time and position, disrupt their mating or even blind them.

This spot is one of Jorma’s favourite places for photographing familiar subjects in creative ways. So he was ready when sunbeams reached through the canopy and a breeze ruffled the water. Trial and error gave him the effect he wanted: a common flower made memorable by a background of rippling light, reflected from the stream.
Along the wetlands and streams of southern Finland, marsh marigolds start to bloom in May. Large, golden-yellow flowers mark them out as relatives of the buttercup. They flourish in damp shade throughout the northern hemisphere and their flowers brighten the banks of any waterway, enriching forest landscapes.

Alessandro had visited this spot more than 50 times, but he had never seen these conditions. The water had frozen to a rich blue, the first snowfall of the year edging the pond’s curves with a delicate beauty. Alessandro composed his image so that the sky and foreground would mirror each other, bisected by the dramatic Dolomites.
The Lagorai mountain range is formed of fine-grained volcanic rock. This makes the ground impermeable, so rainwater tends to sit on its surface, forming many lakes and ponds. The nearby Dolomites, once a geological mystery, are now known to have originated as ancient coral atolls, elevated to great heights over the past 60 million years.

Jaime spotted this glass frog standing guard over its eggs. Keen to photograph it, he set up his kit in the darkness. Blending the green hues of the frog’s body into a soft background, Jaime revealed the small amphibian’s red heart through the transparent skin of its belly.
Atrato glass frogs lay as many as 25 eggs each on leaves hanging over streams. Males then cling on to protect their developing offspring from predators and dehydration. Once hatched, the tadpoles will drop into the water below.

Frank chose a wasp burrow out of direct sunshine so as not to let too much light into his camera. He then set up an infrared beam, which, when broken by a wasp, triggered a very fast shutter system. In this perfectly balanced composition, Frank captured not one, but two, of the small subjects – the wasp on the right measuring only six millimetres.
These two wasps have very different approaches to laying their eggs. The cuckoo wasp (right) lays its eggs in the burrows of solitary digger wasps. When its young hatch, they feed on their host’s egg or larva and then the food store. The redbanded sand wasp (left) lays eggs in its own burrow, supplying a caterpillar for each of its young to eat.

Jaime trekked a long distance to this stream in the hope of finding glass frogs. Instead, he found a wandering spider devouring glass frog eggs. Jaime caught the spider as it grasped the thin jelly coating between its fangs, steadying an egg with its palps – mouthparts that help with sensing and feeding.
Wandering spiders are usually sit-and-wait predators, pouncing on a wide range of insects and small vertebrates before injecting them with digestive juices and sucking in the liquefied prey. But this clutch of glass frog eggs would have been an irresistibly easy meal.

Bernhard discovered this small party while out on a night hike. A group of ants was surrounding a planthopper in order to feed on the sweet honeydew it excretes as a digestive waste product. Remaining poised, despite the large, nocturnal wasps buzzing around his headtorch, Bernhard was able to catch the feasting formation.
Giant forest ants are among the largest ants in the world: these particular workers measure just over two centimetres each. Yet, despite their size and formidable pincers, they feed mostly on honeydew. In return for the energy-rich drink, ants can offer planthoppers protection from predators and parasites.

Indonesian officials torched a pyre of wildlife contraband, confiscated from illegal trade, which included elephant tusks and tiger trophies. Such highly prized possessions are often seen as status symbols. Paul’s image highlights Indonesia as a global hub for the lucrative trade in wildlife, dead or alive.
This international industry makes more than $20 billion a year. Indonesia’s Sumatran tiger – the smallest of all tigers – is critically endangered: fewer than 400 remain. The country’s other two types of tiger have already been hunted to extinction. Tiger poaching continues, even in protected areas, supplying domestic and international demand for products like skins, teeth, taxidermies, bones and tiger bone wine.

Animals used for entertainment can live painfully hard lives.
This blind bear was made to pose for tourist photos in a theme park in Guangxi, China. The crude ring through its nose was a constant torment. ‘It’s torture,’ says Paul, ‘one false move and it is in so much pain.’

Alberto visits the same meadow every spring, where he knows fieldfares gather to feed on earthworms. Lying flat on the grass, he witnessed this particular ‘cartoon scene’. The fieldfare was pulling and then pausing, dislodging the worm bit by bit, but not using so much force as to snap it and leave half a meal behind.
Fieldfares are gregarious thrushes that forage for invertebrates on the ground. Earthworms are their main food source during spring and summer, so they must harvest enough to stay alive. Normally, a bird will pull out a worm in one go. But, in this case, the earthworm hung on, contracting its body underground to anchor itself with the tiny bristles that line its body.

Kryštof was staying in a hut with his young naturalists’ club. One beautiful morning, while the others slept, he and a friend crept out to take pictures. Spotting a northern chamois, they began to stalk it up precipitous terrain. But then it disappeared behind a rock. Just as the children began to worry that they might fall, the chamois reappeared, catching them out.
Chamois are related to sheep and goats, and live in mountainous parts of Europe, particularly the region around Turkey and the Balkans. They are nimble creatures, grazing the slopes of their steep, rocky homes, eating grass, leaves and buds at altitudes of up to 3,000 metres.

This signature spider hung above a roadside and Vidyun watched it every weekend for a month, noticing how it regularly rebuilt its web. These spiders are common in his local area in Bangalore, so Vidyun set out to frame this one against the backdrop of an apartment block. He wanted to show how ‘the spider was living among us in my big city’.
Signature spiders decorate their fine webs with zigzags of silken threads, or stabilimenta, which sometimes resemble letters. The spiders build new webs – with different zigzag ‘signatures’ – every day, usually in supportive vegetation, wherever a foothold can be found. The purpose of these ‘signatures’ could be to advertise the traps, deterring birds from crashing through.

Having dived in the same area his whole life, Domenico knew that the stiff breeze on this particular day would be a challenge. But, upon descending beneath the choppy waves, he was rewarded, finding himself ‘in an incredible sea of tunicates’ – marine invertebrates that form long, star-studded-ribbon-like colonies. Domenico framed a jellyfish against the celestial curtain.
Known as the mauve stinger, this relatively small jellyfish can grow to anywhere between three and 12 centimetres across. Although little, it can form large blooms, which are potential hazards to swimmers. Unusually for jellyfish, this species has stinging cells on its umbrella-shaped bell, as well as on its tentacles and the oral arms that trail from around its mouth.

This porch was on a route regularly taken by leopards, so Nayan asked the family who lived there if he could shoot some photographs. Having secured permission, he set up his camera trap, taking advantage of the artificial light percolating through the latticed wall. His picture conveys the versatility of a remarkable predator, as well as hope for our future coexistence.
The Warli people, based near Mumbai, have learnt to live alongside leopards. The cats come in at night from the nearby national park. Food thrown away on the streets attracts dogs, which are easier pickings for the leopards than the deer in the woods. Attacks on humans do happen, but are rare.

One hand raised, signalling to the polar bear to stand, and the other holding a rod, the trainer directed the bear through the ice-rink show. A wire muzzle was used to prevent the bear from biting and blue safety netting surrounded the circus ring to protect the audience. This bear is one of four animal performers in the world’s only polar bear circus.
Sensitive to their environment, polar bears do not fare well in captivity, with many dying young. Yet they are popular exhibits in zoos across the globe, even in hotter climates. Back in their Arctic home, these bears are threatened by climate change, as well as habitat destruction from oil exploration work.

A chimpanzee entertained the crowd in an Animal Olympics show at the Shanghai Wildlife Park, China.
Although these apes are protected under international law, the laws aren’t always enforced and documents are sometimes faked. Only baby chimps can be transported – each costing around $10,000.

Great crested grebes are a favourite subject for Alberto, who is drawn to their striking appearance. Warm water from an underground pipe caused fish to congregate around this particular grebe, providing it with an easy fishing opportunity. Alberto managed to capture not just the beauty of the bird, but also the size and strength of its catch.
Grebes typically feed on small fish, but the unusual concentration available to this one gave it the chance to try for something bigger – probably a rudd. The fish was almost too large for the bird to swallow. The grebe’s grey-and-white winter plumage had already transformed into the rich browns and russets of the spring breeding season.

The sandy banks of the river attracted hundreds of bee-eaters to nest. Protruding twigs made valuable ‘stages’ for the birds to pose on as they presented gifts of bees and other insects to their partners. There was stiff competition for the perches and these two males fought over one on camera. To Alberto, they looked like ‘two wrestlers portrayed by the sculptors of ancient Greece’.
In May and June, European bee-eaters return from their wintering grounds in Africa to breed in southern Europe. They congregate in large numbers for safety, with the best nesting sites enticing the most birds. These brightly coloured animals feed on insects, including – as their name suggests – different types of bee.

An adult mute swan stretched out its wings to launch a furious attack on a juvenile. Watching from the riverbank, Alberto followed the drama as the older bird repeatedly climbed on top of the younger one in an attempt to drown it. When the birds careered towards him, Alberto captured the violence of a species that is so often seen as a symbol of love.
Male swans can be territorial and, during breeding season, aggressive. Youngsters – identified by their pale, pinkish beaks and patchy brown-and-white plumage – are unwanted rivals. Belligerence between mute swans is normally preceded by warning displays of foot-slapping, wing-flapping and threatening postures. If the competition persists, a clash will follow.

When a weaver ant colony went hunting for small insects on a dry riverbed, this beetle began to pick them off. In an act of defence, one of the ants bit into the predator’s hind leg, but the beetle swiftly turned and snipped its attacker in two. ‘The beetle kept pulling,’ says Ripan, ‘trying to rid itself of the ant’s grip.’
A tiger beetle’s bulging eyes are excellent for spotting prey, including flies, spiders and ants. It can sprint towards a meal so fast that it may struggle to see potential obstacles in time, holding its antennae out in front for guidance instead. Its bright orange spots may be a warning to predators that it uses poison – cyanide – for protection.

As the ants streamed back to their nest, this worker carried a stone, several times its body weight, in a vice-like grip. Ripan noticed a few other ants with equally surprising cargo: a scrap of orange peel and a scale from a snake’s skin. The colony’s smaller workers, meanwhile, would have been looking after the larvae in the nest.
Most objects transported by ants are prey items: insects, arachnids and even larger animals. Yet some ant species are known to take dried tree sap back to their nests, using it as an antiseptic to control the spread of disease in their colonies. Others place objects near their nests that act as sun traps to radiate warmth.

Moving away from its shallow ground nest within a special island conservation area, this chick called out for a dawn feed. Filip was positioned nearby with his father and, as the sun rose, the place became busy with bird activity. Filip decided to focus on the little tern as a symbol of hope for a growing bird population.
This island is part of a scheme to encourage wildlife back to the river. When development was carried out, much wild habitat was destroyed and ground‑nesting birds were decimated. Chicks like the one pictured need up to 60 feeds a day for the first few weeks of life to have a chance of growing to adulthood.

Jaime hoped to see this particular species of harlequin toad while working with a conservation group. The couple he found was in amplexus – a mating behaviour in which a male fertilises eggs as they are released from a female’s body – and may have remained so for weeks. To capture the toads’ rich colours and patterns, Jaime carefully positioned flashes around the branch.
The species pictured may be surviving, but, like many amphibians, it is vulnerable to a fungal disease that invades the surface layers of its skin. This fungus has contributed to most species of harlequin toad becoming endangered or extinct. Encouragingly, monitoring and land protection are now improving this toad’s chance of survival.

While trekking, Roman noticed little pits in the ground. He knew that in each pit lay an antlion larva, waiting to grab passing ants to eat. Finally, one reared up from its hiding place and Roman witnessed a catch. He focused on the scene, photographing the start of the struggle. The antlion larva eventually subdued its prey and dragged it underground.
Antlions look like dragonflies as adults, but their larvae live in the ground. An antlion larva digs a pit to trap its prey by crawling backwards in a spiral and pushing soil out above it. Digging continues until the pit reaches a critical slope – at which point, any disturbance above triggers a collapse. When prey falls in, the larva is ready with its spiny pincers.

Alberto likes to know his subjects well, so he observed the Alpine ibex year-round. He knew that their most brutal fights took place during the summer mating season, or rut, but also that ‘short tests of strength’ – like this one – happened in the winter. After walking up a steep slope, mindful of crevices hidden in the snow, Alberto found these two, horns locked.
The two ibex pictured were fighting to establish social dominance and access to partners during the winter mating season. The third ibex was watching with its upper lip curled. This is known as flehmen – a courtship behaviour in which an animal raises its nose to the air with its mouth slightly open.

A market trader sliced fruit bats, surrounded by his wares: pythons on the left of the shot; a rat’s tail below; and more bats to the right. Visiting Indonesia, Quentin had an opportunity to photograph the bushmeat trade. Local hunters and vendors were selling wild mammals, reptiles, cats and dogs – some brought in dead, others traded alive or killed on site.
This type of wild animal market may have been the origin of COVID-19, via cross-species transmission. While people have called on wildlife markets to be banned to prevent future pandemics, there are those who believe that such sites should instead be regulated since communities depend on them for food.

As the sun set, the light faded across the vast tar mine. This land’s formerly rich forest was razed to extract the underlying ‘oil sands’ – a shallow layer of sand and clay that contains a dense form of petroleum. Garth captured an aerial view of the desolate landscape, conveying the scale of the destruction.
Creating this type of mine involves the felling of boreal forest –an ecosystem that can store twice as much carbon per hectare as tropical rainforest. Continuing to exploit large oil reserves would be catastrophic for the environment. A growing focus on climate change has led to the abandonment of new oil sands mining projects, though this has left local workers unemployed.