The London Natural History Museum and BBC are jointly having their 50th Annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest (the LNHM site is here), and Distractify has put up some of the 50 finalists
From those Professor Ceiling Cat has chose ten of His favorite images, which of course include felids. Here they are, with the photographers named below their pictures. I’ve had to leave out some great photos, so go over to Distractify to see the ones that didn’t make it here. (The LNHM site doesn’t seem to show the finalists.)
and, big fight!:
h/t: Gregory
Wow, that last one is a battle of the titans! I wonder which one was thinking “I reckon I can eat that.”
But the title ‘shoaling reef squid’ applies to the pic above it.
It should be ‘jaguar vs caiman’, or something.
Or “Epic nom!”
Is that what the species are? Jaguar and Caiman? I’m not that familiar with the markings of a jaguar and if I can’t see the snout, I can’t differentiate between a caiman and an american alligator.
I saw video of the event. At least I am fairly sure this pic and the video I mention are the same event.
The jaguar came out of the forest in the background (off top of pic), spotted the caiman, stealthily swam across the intervening water to the sand bar, then attacked the caiman. There was a bit of a tussle, then the jaguar gained control (the pic here is at about that moment), swam back across the water all the while maintaining control of the caiman, then fairly swiftly for such a relatively large load trotted off into the forest with the caiman in its jaws.
It was an eye opening demonstration of just how strong and capable big cats really are. Jaguars are one of the most successful hunters of the large cats. If I recall correctly they are beaten only by panthers, which have an absurdly high success rate. Somewhere in the 80 percent range, again if I recall correctly, of their (panthers) attempts are successful.
That’s amazing – thank you for the additional information!
=^_^=
Thanks for that! I was wondering what happened – such a fantastic pic.
Here it is. I’m not quite sure how to stop it embedding… but it’s such a great clip, I’ll put it up anyway:
And if somebody could educate me on how to stop a youtube link embedding, I’d appreciate it.
Read the Roolz found in the sidebar. Embedding is not totally forbidden. From Rool 15:
Linking to videos. Don’t embed them directly unless you have something really special to show, for it makes the comments unwieldy. If you just paste in the http:// address of a YouTube video, for instance, it will put the entire video in your comment. Occasionally I will let this go, but sometimes readers insert multiple videos. To avoid this, and create a link, use the following html formulation:
<a href=”URL”>LinkText</a> (note space after first “a”)
For me, this video qualifies. Thanks for the backstory too. Cats rule!
FYI, the croc/gator(?) and cheetah photo is incorrectly attributed/labeled.
Fixed, thanks.
wow. must be hard to be a judge! shew, good stuff!!!!!
Fabulous pictures. My favourite is the Piraputangus. I wish I had taken it!
It’s shot from a mind-blowing perspective. Gorgeous!
I like the owl the best – I would have titled it, “yep, I still smell fresh”. 🙂
I’m still trying to work out which way up it’s head is.
Upside down; mouth open above right eye.
My vote’s for the owl, too. Such an unexpected posture, and the pattern effect reminds me of certain optical illusions.
Our kids love the squid, though, even more than the apex predators love-biting, which I would’ve thought was more their style. Sigh. I guess my little boys are growing up.
Yes, I like the squid too as they look like how we imagine space vessels. It would make a lovely matted print!
“Someone left the cat out in the rain…”
Ahhhh ear worm!
These are grrrrreat!
Toni, is that you?
I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your emails. Really informative on every level- Thank you!
Sent from my iPhone
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These are all great images! The minimalist in me loves the winter hares, but my weakness for grebes is winning.
Those are terrific. Wow!