Online voting is now open for the People’s Choice Award winner in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest, an annual competition developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. You can chose your favorite from among 25 shortlisted photos of the near-50,000 submitted to the competition. From mudskippers and bulrushes to lions and jellyfish, the natural world has something for everyone… and it’s up to you which gets the final say.
You can vote for a winner online or in person at the museum. See the impressive lineup here.
Two courting hares touch noses in the Monadhliath Mountains of Scotland.
Two moon jellyfish swim under the vibrant blues and greens of the aurora borealis.
An Ethiopian wolf—an exceedingly rare species of wild dog—takes a break near wildflowers in Bale Mountains National Park.
A young red fox takes a moment to study the shrew it just yanked out of the ground and threw into the air.
A crop raiding bull elephant looks for food in a garbage dump in Sri Lanka.
Coats made from big cat skins hang in Hamburg’s Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change.
A wood duck checks in on her chicks amid a snowstorm in Australia.
A macaque takes a sip out of a bottle in a pile meant to be recycled on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
This stupefying shot captures a murmuration of starlings as they fly over Rome. In this moment, the murmuration took a shape reminiscent of a bird in flight.
A snowshoe hare’s hind legs line up with its head in this fleeting moment, as the fluffy mammal prepares to take its next leap in Rocky Mountain National Park.
A pygmy round-eared bat returns to its nest, which is carved into the nest of a termite colony.
A parasitic cuckoo wasp approaches the clay burrow of a mason bee. The wasp carries a water droplet, which it uses along with its saliva to soften the clay to get at the burrow within. Once inside, the wasp lays its eggs and reseals the burrow; when the eggs hatch, the wasp progeny feeds on mason bee larvae.
A lion cub checks out the photographer in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park.
A barn swallow seen from below, flying through a field of cornflowers.
A grizzly bear looks uneasy as it’s captured in the photographer’s frame while salmon fishing in British Columbia’s Chilko River.
A humpback whale calf missed capturing milk from its mother, and it here swirls aimlessly in the currents off French Polynesia.
Three geladas in Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains.
Two lionesses groom a lion cub in their pride.
A red fox checks out a rubbish bin in London, England.
A polar bear finds a surprising place to rest on a lopsided iceberg north of Svalbard.
A mudskipper defends itself from a crab in Australia’s Roebuck Bay.
A rescued chimpanzee in the Republic of Guinea’s Chimpanzee Conservation Center. The center houses chimpanzees that were sold as pets after their mothers were killed for bushmeat, according to the Natural History Museum.
An Adélie penguin approaches an emperor penguin and its chick in Antarctica’s Atka Bay. The smaller penguins sometimes try to opportunistically steal food from the larger penguin species.
A Balkan pond turtle looks up at a dragonfly balanced on the tip of its nose.
Bulrushes and aspen trees in Spain show the dazzling color palette of autumn.
