In a moment of mercy, a turtle was captured letting a dragonfly perch on its face instead of turning it into a crunchy snack.
The Balkan pond turtle lives all over Asia and Europe, and enjoys a rich diet of whatever is nearby. But they tend to prefer meat, according to the Croatian Herpetological Society, which makes the turtle’s decorum here even kinder.
“The turtle appeared to be experiencing pleasure from the interaction as they shared a moment of peaceful coexistence in the midst of the swamp’s murky waters,” photographer Tzahi Finkelstein said in the official caption for the photograph.
This photo is one of 25 currently up for consideration as the public’s favorite wildlife photo of 2023.
It’s an offshoot of a larger contest that was initially judged in October, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, which is 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 displayed in the museum along with those announced earlier this year.
This is only a portion 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 closes on January 31, 2024.
A bear side-eyeing the photographer
Grizzly bears have made a comeback in North America thanks to conservation efforts beginning in the 1970s. Nowadays, people can’t get enough of the cuddly-looking carnivores.
The Chilko River, in British Columbia, Canada, is known for its grizzly bears. Multiple companies offer tours to the area to view the bears as they feast on local sockeye salmon populations.
John Marriott, the photographer who captured this moment, was leading a grizzly photography tour when he stumbled upon this bear.
As they approached in their small fishing boat, the official caption detailed, the bear glanced at them with a “quizzical” expression for a moment, before refocusing on the salmon.
A curious lion cub and its watchful mom
Life on the Savanna can be brutal for the king of the jungle, and a baby lion has to be wary of predators like humans, leopards, and adult male lions. As such, the photo’s official caption detailed, the mother lions usually keep their kids hidden away for about the first six weeks of their life.
The photo, named “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 with all the animal had to fear, it approached Hinde. Curiosity, it seems, is not limited to house cats.
A homecoming for this bat
This photograph features the underside of a pygmy round-eared bat as it makes its final flap towards its home in a termite nest in Costa Rica.
It returns home to two nearly indistinguishable bats, poking their heads out from the nest.
This odd-looking nest isn’t just decorative, it’s a unique feature of this species that the photographer, Dvir Barkay, said took years to capture.
The bats make their home in termite nests in Costa Rica by hollowing them out with their teeth, according to the image caption.
A sleepy polar bear
Polar bears, like us, sometimes fuss around with their bedding before dozing off to sleep.
In this case, photographer Nima Sarikhani watched as this polar bear used his paws to carve out a nook in a small iceberg, making it an ideal spot to doze off.
Sarikhani found this picky sleeper in the water off of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway.
Though the area is known as the “land of the polar bears“, it took Sarikhani three days and multiple course corrections on their research vessel to find any bears at all.
A neighborly disagreement
This funny-looking creature is no stranger to hardship — the mudskipper is a hardy fish that can live both in and out of water.
This particular fish was found fighting off an invading crab in Roebuck Bay, Australia, by photographer Ofer Levy. Levy witnessed the fish repeatedly initiating the brawl over its muddy kingdom.
“This crab is evidently trespassing, and by opening its mouth and raising its dorsal fin, the mudskipper is challenging the intruder, attempting to scare it off with a threatening display,” according to the official caption for the photo.
An elephant kicking through the trash to pick through it
This photograph captured an elephant scavenging for food at a dump in Sri Lanka. As humans continue encroaching into elephant habitat, onlookers have witnessed more of this behavior, according to the caption.
From scarring on the elephant’s legs, it appeared the animal had been shot before, most likely by a farmer trying to keep it from eating crops.
So, the caption detailed, this elephant is probably no stranger to scavenging for food.
Lionesses showing that it takes a village
This photo shows two lionesses grooming a young cub under their care in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The area is home to an estimated 850 to 900 lions.
“The youngster was clearly enjoying the moment of affection and attention,” according to the caption.
Female lions raise cubs indiscriminately, sharing the load of parenting duties and keeping the cubs together in a nursery group called a crèche.
This isn’t just a heart-warming display of cooperation, but may also helps the cubs avoid being eaten. There is safety in numbers after all.
A penguin bothering its neighbors
Adélie penguins are known nuisances in the Antarctic, according to the caption on this photograph, which is entitled “Troublemaker”.
During certain seasons, Adélies can be found taunting other penguin species, like Emperors, to try to get them to drop their food.
So when photographer Stefan Christmann saw this Adélie approach an adult Emperor and its chick, he paid special attention.
A hare gliding above the snow
Photographer Deena Sveinsson waited hours for this sleeping snowshoe hare to wake form its slumber, capturing the moment its paws struck the snow.
These large, flat feet act like snowshoes, and help to keep the hare from sinking into the snow.
Sveinsson herself had to wear snowshoes in order 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 shrew
Like children, red foxes sometimes play with their food.
In this case, a fox cub in the Judean Foothills of Israel was caught staring down a shrew it had just grabbed out of the sand and thrown up into the air.
Photographer Ayala Fishaimer caught this interaction on camera after following this cub and its three siblings.
Source: Business Insider
