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You can vote for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award.
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The Natural History Museum in London has released the images and will display them in February.
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The photos show an elephant kicking up trash, a territorial mudskipper, a loving lion family and more.
In a moment of mercy, a turtle was caught letting a dragonfly perch on its face rather than turning it into a crunchy snack.
The Balkan pond turtle lives throughout Asia and Europe and enjoys a varied diet of whatever is nearby. But the fact that turtles tend to prefer meat makes turtle etiquette here even gentler, according to the Croatian Herpetological Society.
“The turtle appeared to enjoy the interaction as they shared a moment of peaceful coexistence amidst the murky waters of the swamp,” photographer Tzahi Finkelstein wrote in the photo’s official caption. said.
This photo is one of 25 photos currently rated as the public’s favorite wildlife photo of 2023.
It is a spin-off of a larger competition, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, developed and produced by the Natural History Museum in London, which was first judged in October.
The winners of the people’s choice award will be announced in February 2024 and will be displayed at the museum along with those announced earlier this year.
This is just some of the 25 images featured in the title. If you want to see them all and vote for your favorite, you can do so here. Voting will end on January 31, 2024.
A bear looking sideways at the photographer
Grizzly bears have made a comeback in North America thanks to conservation efforts that began in the 1970s. Nowadays, people can’t get enough of cute-looking carnivores.
The Chilko River in British Columbia, Canada is known for its grizzly bears. Many companies offer tours to the area to see bears feasting on local salmon populations.
Photographer John Marriott, who captured this moment, came across this bear while taking a photo tour with the grizzly bear.
As they approached in their small fishing boat, the bear detailed in the official title looked at them “playfully” for a moment before refocusing on the salmon.
A curious lion cub and his careful mother
Life in the savanna can be brutal for the king of the jungle, and the lion cub must be wary of predators such as humans, leopards and adult male lions. As detailed in the photo’s official caption, mother lions usually keep their children hidden for the first six weeks of their lives.
In the photograph titled “Curiosity” by photographer Gerald Hinde, a lion cub is seen approaching a vehicle while his mother watches in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park.
Despite its fear, the animal approached Hinde. It turns out curiosity isn’t limited to house cats.
This is the bat’s homecoming
This photo shows the underside of a pygmy round-eared bat as it makes its final wing flap toward its home in a termite mound in Costa Rica.
He returns home with two bats, almost indistinguishable from each other, sticking their heads out of the nest.
This strange-looking nest is not only decorative, but also a unique feature of this species, which photographer Dvir Barkay says took years to capture.
According to the photo’s caption, bats make nests by carving out termite mounds with their teeth in Costa Rica.
A sleepy polar bear
Like us, polar bears sometimes fiddle with their bedding before falling asleep.
In this case, photographer Nima Sarikhani watched this polar bear use his paws to carve a corner in a small iceberg, making it an ideal place to nap.
Sarikhani found this picky sleeper in the waters of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway.
Although the area is known as “the land of polar bears”, it took three days and numerous course corrections on the research vessel to find any bears in Sarihani.
neighborhood dispute
This funny-looking creature is no stranger to challenges; The mudskipper is a hardy fish that can live both in and out of water.
This particular fish was found by photographer Ofer Levy while fighting an invasive crab in Roebuck Bay, Australia. Levy has witnessed the fish repeatedly start fights over its muddy kingdom.
According to the photo’s official caption, “This crab is clearly trespassing and the mudskipper challenges the intruder by opening its mouth and raising its dorsal fin, attempting to scare it away with a threatening display.”
An elephant kicking the trash to mix it up
This photo shows an elephant foraging for food in a garbage dump in Sri Lanka. According to the caption, viewers are witnessing more of this behavior as humans continue to encroach on elephants’ habitat.
The scars on the elephant’s legs indicate that the animal had been shot before, most likely a farmer was trying to stop it from eating crops.
So, as the title details, this elephant is probably no stranger to scavenging for food.
Lionesses show it takes a village
This photo shows two lionesses grooming a young cub in their care in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The area is estimated to be home to an estimated 850 to 900 lions.
According to the caption, “The teenager was clearly enjoying the moment of love and care.”
Lionesses raise their 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 heart-warming display of cooperation, it can also help pups avoid being eaten. After all, there is safety in numbers.
Penguin disturbing its neighbors
According to the “Troublemaker” caption on this photo, Adélie penguins are known to be troublemakers in Antarctica.
During certain seasons, Adélies can be seen taunting other penguin species, such as Emperors, to get them to drop their food.
Photographer Stefan Christmann took special interest when he saw this Adélie approaching an adult emperor and his chick.
A rabbit gliding on the snow
Photographer Deena Sveinsson waited for hours for the sleeping snowshoe hare to wake up from her sleep and photographed the moment her paws hit the snow.
These large, flat feet act like snowshoes and help prevent the rabbit from sinking into the snow.
To get to this point in Rocky Mountain National Park, Sveinsson himself had to don snowshoes, aligning subject and photographer in the fight against the elements.
A fox bargains with a mouse
Like children, red foxes sometimes play with their food.
In this case, a fox cub in the Judean foothills of Israel was caught staring at a mouse that he had just caught from the sand and thrown 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