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You can vote for the People’s Choice Award for Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
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The images were released by the Natural History Museum in London, and will go on display in February.
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The photos show an elephant kicking trash, a territory skipper, a loving lion family, and more.
In a moment of mercy, a turtle was caught letting a dragonfly perch on its face instead of turning it into a crunchy snack.
The Balkan pond turtle lives throughout Asia and Europe, and enjoys a rich diet of whatever is nearby. But they usually prefer meat, according to the Herpetological Society of Croatia, which makes the decorum of the turtle here even more stark.
“The turtle seemed to be enjoying the interaction as they shared a moment of peaceful coexistence in the middle of the murky waters of the stream,” said photographer Tzahi Finkelstein in the photo’s official caption.
This photo is one of 25 currently up for consideration as the public’s favorite wildlife photo of 2023.
It is the result of a larger competition first noticed in October, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, developed and produced by the Natural History Museum in London.
The winners of the people’s choice award will be announced in February 2024 and will be displayed in the museum alongside those announced earlier this year.
These are just some of the 25 images up for the title. If you want to see them all, and vote for your favorite, you can do so here. Voting will close on 31 January 2024.
Bear side-eyeing the photographer
Grizzly Bears made a comeback in North America thanks to conservation efforts that began in the 1970s. Nowadays, people can’t get enough of the cuddly looking carnivores.
The Chilko River, in British Columbia, Canada, is famous for its grizzly bears. Numerous companies offer tours to the area to watch the bears feast on local sockeye salmon populations.
John Marriott, the photographer who captured this moment, was leading a grizzly photography trip when he came upon this bear.
As they approached in their small fishing boat, the official caption detailed, the bear looked at them with a “puzzling” expression for a moment, before refocusing on the salmon.
A curious lion cub and his watchful mother
Life on the Savanna can be brutal for the king of the jungle, and a baby lion must be wary of predators such as humans, leopards, and adult male lions. So, as stated in the photo’s official caption, mother lions usually keep their cubs hidden for about the first six weeks of their lives.
The photo, titled “Curiosity” by photographer Gerald Hinde, shows a lion cub approaching a vehicle as its mother watches in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park.
Even when the animal was all scared, it approached Hinde. Curiosity, it seems, is not limited to domestic cats.
A home run for this at bat
This photo shows the underside of a white-eared bat making its final flap towards home in a termite nest in Costa Rica.
He returns home to two unrecognizable bats, poking their heads out of the nest.
This nest is not just a decoration, but a unique feature of this species said the photographer, Dvir Barkay, who took years to capture.
The bats make their homes in termite nests in Costa Rica by hollowing them out with their teeth, according to the image’s caption.
Sleepy white bear
Polar bears, like us, sometimes make fun of their bedding before they go to sleep.
In this case, photographer Nima Sarikhani watched as this polar bear used its paws to carve a hole in a small iceberg, making it the perfect place for a doze.
Sarikhani found this sleeping monster in the water off the Svalbard archipelago in Norway.
Although the area is known as the “land of polar bears”, it took Sarikhani three days and multiple course corrections on his research vessel to find any bears.
Neighbor disagreement
This funny-looking creature is no stranger to hardship – the mudskipper is a tough fish that can survive both in and out of the water.
Photographer Ofer Levy found this particular fish fighting an invading crab in Roebuck Bay, Australia. Levy saw the fish time and time again starting the fight over his muddy kingdom.
“This crab is clearly trespassing, and by opening its mouth and raising its dorsal fin, the mudskipper is facing the intruder, trying to scare it off with a threatening display,” according to the photo’s official caption .
An elephant kicking through the trash to pick through
This photo was taken of an elephant looking for food at a dump in Sri Lanka. As humans continue to disrupt elephant habitat, viewers have seen more of this behavior, according to the caption.
From the scarring on the elephant’s legs, it seemed that the animal had been shot before, probably by a farmer trying to keep it from eating crops.
Hence the detailed caption, this elephant is probably no stranger to scavenging for food.
Lionesses showing that it takes a village
This photo shows two lions grooming a young cub in their care in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. It is estimated that there are between 850 and 900 lions in the area.
“The youngster was clearly enjoying the moment of affection and attention,” according to the caption.
The female lions raise cubs indiscriminately, sharing the burden of parenting duties and keeping the cubs together in a nursery group called a nursery.
Not only is this a heartwarming display of cooperation, but it may help keep the puppies from eating. There is safety in numbers after all.
Penguin disturbing his neighbors
Adélie penguins are known nuisances in the Antarctic, according to the caption on this photo, titled “Troublemaker”.
During certain seasons, Adélies can be found taunting other penguin species, such as Emperors, to try and get them to drop their food.
So when the photographer Stefan Christmann saw this approach Adélie as an adult Emperor and his chick, he paid particular attention.
A hare flew above the snow
Photographer Deena Sveinsson waited hours for this sleeping snow bunny to wake up from her sleep, capturing the moment her paws hit the snow.
These large flat feet act like snowshoes, and help keep the hare from going into the snow.
Sveinsson herself had to wear snowshoes to make it to this point in Rocky Mountain National Park, aligning subject and photographer in the fight against the elements.
A fox negotiating with a blindfold
Like children, red foxes sometimes play with their food.
In this case, a fox cub in Israel’s Judah Foundation was caught staring down a blindfold that had just been plucked from the sand and thrown up into the air.
Photographer Ayala Fishaimer captured this interaction on camera after following this cub and his three siblings.
Read the original article on Business Insider
