Amazing animal photos you can’t miss in the the Royal Society Publishing Photo Competition
Staff writers, News Corp Australia Network
A HUNGRY griffon vulture seen from the inside of the rib cage of a large mammal is just one of the many stunning images captured for the second annual Royal Society Publishing Photo Competition.
The vulture was captured by Jonathan Diaz-Marba in Spain, after he tried his luck using his camera inside the carcass, shooting from a hide with the help of a trigger wire 20 metres long.
Other incredibly up-close images that have been short-listed for the competition include a swarm of jellyfish in the UK, an eagle ray swimming over a reef with its prey in the Caribbean and colourful butterflies gathering on the head of a caiman reptile in the Amazon to collect salt for their survival.
Colourful butterflies gather on the head of this caiman to collect salt in Peru. This photo was taken for the for the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition Picture: Mark Cowan
Another image depicts one of Japan’s macaques, the most northern-living, non-human primates who survive in the coldest conditions.
A ghostly image of luminescent mayflies against the night sky won first place in the competition, which celebrates the power of photography to communicate science and shows the beautiful images encountered while studying the world around us.
The winning shot, by Imre Potyó, shows the final courtship dance of short-lived adult Danube mayflies on the bank of the Rába River in Hungary.
All the winning photos and runners-up will be on display at a free exhibition at the Royal Society on September 17 and 18 during the Open House London weekend.
2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition
2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition Picture: Jonathan Diaz-Marba. In search of food – Runner up: Behaviour. I watched feeding griffon vultures searching inside the ribcage of a large mammal. I tried my luck using the camera inside the carcass, shooting from a hide with the help of a trigger wire. Andorra, Spain.
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2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition Picture: Imre Potyó. Dancing with stars – Overall winner and Winner: Behaviour. This photo captures the courtship dance of the short-lived adult mayflies on the bank of the Rába River, a tributary of the Danube in Hungary. The life of an adult mayfly is very short. They hatch from their juvenile aquatic form, mate in this fantastic spectacle, and then perish. The swarming dates are unpredictable and the dance might last only a couple of hours. The mayflies start to swarm after sunset and do not leave the vicinity of the water surface during their courtship. At the beginning, females and males fly above the water surface where they copulate. After that the females begin their upstream-directed compensatory flight, which ends when they deposit their eggs onto the water surface. This shot captures the fantastic energy and chaos of the mayflies’ dance and the mood of the night time too. Nikon D90 + Sigma 17-70mm f2.8-4.5 lens. Rába river, Hungary. to the asphalt roads of the bridge and perish immediately. The team of the Danube Research Institute in cooperation with the Environmental Optics Laboratory plan to solve this biooptical and environmental problem. This image is very precious to me as I can draw the attention to these spectacular water insects and their complex ecological light trap, which endanger their survival. Rába river, Hungary.
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2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition Picture: Mark Cowan Butterflies and caiman – Special commendation. Colourful butterflies gather on the head of this caiman to collect salt - an important mineral for their survival. This photo was taken while on a scientific expedition to the Amazon Los Amigos Conservation Concession, Peru.
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2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition. Picture: Alexandre Bonnefoy Fubuki (snow storm) – Special commendation. Japanese macaques are the most northern-living, non-human primates and survive in the coldest conditions. They huddle in small family groups to keep warm. This behaviour is peculiar to the monkeys in Shodoshima and in Nagano.
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2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition. Picture: Nick Robertson-Brown. Departing eagle ray – Winner: Evolutionary Biology. An eagle ray swims over the reef with its prey, having dug it up from the sandy sea-bed. Eagle rays have evolved very long tails but this is the longest that I have ever seen. Grand Cayman, Caribbean.
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2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition. Picture: Prasenjeet Yadav Speeding divergence – Special commendation (Publisher’s choice). The Superb fan-throated lizard is a native to a small high-elevation, iron-rich and humid, plateau in the northern Western Ghats of India has been converted into one of Asia’s largest wind farms.
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Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition Picture:Tane Sinclair-Taylor. In a world without colour – Winner: Ecology and Environmental Science. A solitary juvenile clown fish stands out in its colourless habitat among the tentacles of the sea anemone. This photo was shot during a research cruise documenting devastating post-bleaching coral mortality in the Farasan Banks in the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia.
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2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition. Picture: Clare Collins Carbon nanotube jellyfish – Special commendation. Seemingly a swarm of jellyfish, this image was actually created using carbon nanotubes grown in a pillar formation. The metal disks that make up the jellyfish bodies are made by ‘sputtering’ charged aluminium and iron ions onto a surface to deposit a thin film of the metals. Cambridge, UK.
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2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition. Picture: Tyler Square. The spiralled snake axis – Runner up: Micro-imaging. During early growth and development, most vertebrate animals look quite similar. Here the 5mm long elongated body of the snake develops as a spiral to fit inside the egg. Boulder, Colorado, USA
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2016 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition Picture: Tegwen Gadais Les artistes – Runner up: Ecology and Environmental Science. This photograph was taken on Royal Bay located on the island of South Georgia, where I observed Gentoo penguins seemingly “decorating” their nest with guano – their excrement.
