Best picture of animals
National Geographic’s best animal photos of 2021
The beluga calf, nestled amid its family, glides across the bottom of the rocky sea floor. Poking out of its mouth is a flat stone—a toy for passing around among the whales. Belugas, scientists believe, have complex social structures: They teach each other swimming routes; they use individual calls, possibly to broadcast their identities; they flit and flirt and frolic together, waggling their flukes and shimmying their bodies along the seafloor to exfoliate their skin; they engage in play. We’re only beginning to understand the depths of whale culture.
Brian Skerry’s photograph of the playful young beluga is the first of its kind. It’s one of 28 images selected by National Geographic’s photo editors as our best animal photos of 2021.
This year, as the human world remained mired in pandemic-induced upheaval, the hidden worlds of wild animals carried on, oblivious. Some of National Geographic’s most breathtaking images capture the wonders of nature: Eduard Florin Niga’s portraits reveal in fine detail the diversity of some of the world’s tiniest faces—those of ants. Jennifer Hayes and David Doubilet plunge us into the wide-awake open sea at night, with visions of radiant cowfish and jackfish gliding in blackness. Brian Brown’s photograph of an iridescent orchid bee, collected from a soaring tower in the Brazilian Amazon, introduces a tropical cousin of our backyard bumblebees. It’s one of many Amazonian insects discovered and photographed for the first time. These images help us look beyond ourselves and find respite in the beauty and complexity of animals’ lives.
The specter of humans, though, is never far off. In some of our photographers’ most powerful wildlife images runs an undercurrent of threat. Thomas Peschak’s meerkats and pangolins in the Kalahari Desert, a climate change hot spot, bring into sharp focus their vulnerability. Mélanie Wenger’s image of a curious African penguin in Simon’s Town, South Africa, puts a spotlight on a species that is more endangered than the white rhino and potentially faces extinction within 15 years.
Other photographs highlight helpers.
Brent Stirton’s images of a caretaker cradling a dying gorilla he helped raise and of a pilot flying orphaned chimps to sanctuary, as well as Nichole Sobecki’s photographs of cheetah cubs rescued from the pet trade, document the victims of violence and the humans who try to undo terrible harm.
The dominant theme among this collection, says Kathy Moran, National Geographic’s deputy director of photography, who curated the choices, is the human-wild connection. “Our photographers care so deeply about the stories they’re telling that they’re willing to go to extreme lengths to make photographs that no one has seen before and to share the natural world and all we need to be paying attention to.”
Moran, who is retiring this month after 40 years at the magazine, reflects on how our wildlife photojournalism has changed over the decades. “When I first started, what you’d see were the animal stories, and it was pure wildlife—pure natural history.” Photos celebrating wild creatures defined National Geographic’s wildlife storytelling for years.
“There’s always going to be a place where that delight and charm is necessary,” Moran says. “But increasingly, what became clear to me, was to keep the focus just on that meant we were not telling half of the story.”
National Geographic’s wildlife photojournalism, she says, has evolved into looking beyond merely why an animal fascinates to looking at the issues it faces. Underscoring our photographers’ work, she says, is often the question of “how do we find a way forward for them—and for us? That aspect of storytelling really started to mean more to me … I really felt that the most amazing natural history image was meaningless if that animal was under threat from X, Y, and Z, and we didn’t show it.”
A male panther leaps over a creek at Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Florida. The rarely seen cats, which number only around 200, are reclaiming territory north of the Everglades, but their habitat is threatened by suburban sprawl. In June, Florida enacted sweeping protections for wildlife corridors critical to their survival.
(From “How America’s most endangered cat could help save Florida,” March 2021.)
Photograph by Carlton Ward
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Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
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Glass frogs—tiny Latin American tree dwellers named for their translucent skin—are masters of camouflage. The Manduriacu glass frog (left) is an opportunistic hunter, waiting until a small insect or spider walks by, and then pouncing. Embryos of the Wiley’s glass frog (right), endemic to Ecuador’s eastern Andes, hang from the tip of a fern leaf. When the eggs hatch into tadpoles, they’ll fall into the stream below and continue their development. (From “These see-through frogs are full of surprises,” July 2021.)
Photographs by Jaime Culebras
Orphaned elephants at Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in northern Kenya get a bottle of formula about every three hours.
The calves used to be fed imported human infant formula, but when it became scarce amid the pandemic, sanctuary staff switched the elephants to a formula made of local goat milk, which is cheaper, more sustainable, and easier to source. The elephants are thriving on it. (From “For Kenya’s orphaned elephants, goats to the rescue,” August 2021.)
Photograph by Ami Vitale
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A view from the center of a locust swarm at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in northern Kenya depicts a frenzied scene. Swarms can range from less than half a square mile to 460 square miles, with 40 to 80 million locusts. Since late 2019, clouds of locusts have shrouded the Horn of Africa, devouring crops and pastureland—and triggering a ground and air pesticide-spraying mission spanning eight countries. These chemicals, however, may be devastating to wildlife. (From “A locust plague hit East Africa. The pesticide solution may have dire consequences,” March 2021.
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Photograph by David Chancellor
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Left: Off Marseille, 256 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, narwhal shrimp float in forests of black coral. (The coral is named for its black skeleton, but the living tissue is white.) The shrimp are around four inches long and send signals by touching antennae. In the Mediterranean bits of plastic have been found in their guts.
Right: Swimmers throughout the North Atlantic flee at the sight of this jellyfish, Pelagia nociluca, commonly known as the mauve stinger. Stinging cells cover its tentacles and entire body. But a black coral has paralyzed this one, off La Ciotat, in southern France. (From “They spent 28 days under the sea—and found another Earth,” April 2021.
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Photographs by Laurent Ballesta
Anthony Caere, a pilot for Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, cradles young chimpanzees Felix and Mara as he flies them to Lwiro Primates Rehabilitation Center. The babies’ families were killed by poachers. Caere, who survived a plane crash in 2017, says helping to rescue chimps gives him purpose. (From: “Central African sanctuary gives hope to chimps—and their rescuers,” September 2021.)
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRENT STIRTON
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Ndakasi the mountain gorilla passed away in her caregiver's arms on September 26, shortly after this photo was taken, following a prolonged illness. Andre Bauma and others at the Senkwekwe Mountain Gorilla Center, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have cared for her since 2007, when she was found as an infant clinging to her mother’s dead body. Ndakasi was the only one of her family of critically endangered mountain gorillas to survive an execution-style attack that was later linked to illegal charcoal producers.
(From “Remembering Ndakasi, a beloved mountain gorilla,” October 2021.)
Photograph by Brent Stirton/Getty Images
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Iridescent orchid bees, tropical cousins of bumblebees and honeybees, were among the multitude of new and unusual insects that entomologists collected at a 131-foot observation tower in Manaus, Brazil. Most entomologists study life on the ground. Instead, these scientists looked up—and found a staggering diversity of new creatures. (From “Hundreds of new and unusual insects discovered in the Amazon’s canopy,” March 2021.)
Photograph by Brian Brown
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Photographer Eduard Florin Niga’s ant “headshots” reveal the faces of ants in microscopic detail.
At left is a bullet ant, Paraponera clavata, which is native to Latin America and has one of the most painful stings of any insect. At right is a member of the Camponotus genus, an large and complex group of ants found worldwide, comprising more than a thousand species. (From “These ant ‘portraits’ reveal how diverse and beautiful these insects are,” May 2021.)
Photographs by Eduard Florin Niga
Carla Heras, a volunteer at Santuario Gaia in Camprodon, Spain, cradles Laietana the duck. Laietana is one of 1,500 animals—most rescued from the streets and the farming industry—living at the center. Gaia is among a few dozen sanctuaries in Spain providing a home to animals that had been farmed for food. (From “In Spain, sanctuaries give forever homes to rescued farmed animals,” April 2021.)
Photograph by Ana Palacios
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A whiteout of coral eggs and sperm swirls above Moore Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef.
This annual “broadcast spawning”— triggered by the lunar cycle, water temperature, and day length—gives corals a way to reproduce sexually and maintain genetic diversity. More than a quarter of the world’s known corals are threatened by extinction. “Joy and relief is swimming through a blizzard of coral spawn rising from survivor corals,” photographer David Doubilet says. (From “How coral reefs might survive climate change,” April 2021.)
Photograph by David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes
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When night falls on the open sea, there’s a world to explore. At left, a juvenile jack hides behind a jellyfish—driving it like a motorboat. The jellyfish provides the jack with protection from predators, while the jack may feed on parasites that have latched onto its host.
At right, a coin-size juvenile cowfish flutters off Indonesia’s coast. (From “Meet the creatures of the night sea,” September 2021.)
Photographs by David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes
A pika in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park heads out of the sun and into a rocky den, where it’s cooler. Adapted to survive high-elevation winters, pikas are especially sensitive to warming summers. With the help of volunteers, the Colorado Pika Project aims to gather as much data as possible to better protect the beloved native species. (From “This adorable rabbit relative sounds an alarm for global warming,” August 2021.)
Photograph by Kristi Odom
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Every February, before they begin a grueling trek north, wildebeests—along with the many zebras that travel with them—gather to graze and calve on the short-grass plains near the southern border of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
Half a million young wildebeests are born here each year, an average of 24,000 a day. Calves can walk within minutes of birth. Some 1.3 million wildebeests each year follow seasonal rains in a clockwise loop from Tanzania into Kenya and back—the largest land migration on the planet. (From “Why the wildebeest is the unlikely king of the Serengeti,” November 2021.)
Photograph by CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES
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Guides in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve have dubbed them the “Magnificent Five.” These male cheetahs hunted together for more than four years. Males normally are competitors, but the species is social and highly adaptive. These animals stayed together for as long as they benefited from the alliance. (From “The urgent need to protect the Serengeti’s intricate web of life,” November 2021.)
Photograph by CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES
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A seven-month-old cheetah in the back of an SUV hisses at a rescuer’s outstretched hand. Authorities intercepted the cub, later named Astur, before he could be sold to a smuggler. But every year scores—perhaps hundreds—of mostly very young cheetahs are trafficked out of Somaliland to Persian Gulf states to be sold as pets. (From “How trafficked cheetah cubs move from the wild and into your Instagram feed,” August 2021.)
Photograph by Nichole Sobecki
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Left: Called “Nose” in Somali, San was among 10 cubs rescued in October 2020 after the high-profile arrest of convicted cheetah smuggler Cabdi Xayawaan on wildlife trafficking charges. She had a badly injured nose and cried at first, but since she’s been housed with Link and Zelda (right), she’s settled down.
(From “How trafficked cheetah cubs move from the wild and into your Instagram feed,” August 2021.)
Right: Siblings Link and Zelda were also rescued in Cabdi Xayawaan’s case. Named after characters in Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda, the pair are inseparable—even when Link annoys Zelda with his roughhousing.
Photographs by Nichole Sobecki
For meerkats—a kind of mongoose—in southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert, survival is a group effort. Sentries scan for danger, and lower-ranked adults, mostly females, feed and mind the senior female’s pups. It’s not clear how climate change will affect meerkats in the Kalahari, but hotter, drier summers may reduce their numbers. (From “Rising heat puts the Kalahari’s ecosystem on the edge of survival.” July 2021.)
Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak
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Emerging from their burrows after dark, ground pangolins will each eat about 15,000 ants and termites in a night—5.
5 million in a year. Insect abundance depends on healthy grasses, the thread that binds life on the Kalahari’s nutrient-poor sands. Without summer rains, the greening will fail. The desert is a climate change hot spot: As temperature increases change rain patterns, animals like the pangolin face an uncertain future. (From “Rising heat puts the Kalahari’s ecosystem on the edge of survival.” July 2021.)
Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak
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When an island in Kenya’s Lake Baringo flooded rapidly in late 2020, its eight rare Rothschild’s giraffes were stranded. A team of rescuers ferried them one by one, starting with a female named Asiwa, to a newly built sanctuary on the mainland, using a barge constructed from metal drums, steel beams, and tarps. (From “How former foes worked together to help save these rare giraffes,” April 2021.)
Photograph by AMI VITALE
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Simon’s Town, South Africa, is home to a large breeding colony of African penguins. Some have become habituated to humans, settling in domestic gardens and wandering into homes. A few guesthouses are capitalizing on this, using the penguins’ presence as a selling point, but penguin experts warn that this habituation leads to the birds crossing roads or being struck by cars. Peak tourism season coincides with the birds’ annual molt, a summertime event when the birds are unable to forage for several weeks, potentially making them more vulnerable to stress. (From “Africa’s only penguins face an uncertain future,” October 2021.)
Photograph by Melanie Wenger, National Geographic
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A leopard seal drifts next to an iceberg off the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Air bubbles released from the melting ice stick to the lens of the underwater camera.
For these seals, ice floes are a place to breed and molt, and they provide habitat for krill, an important prey. (From “An icy world is in meltdown, as penguin population shifts signal trouble,” October 2021.)
Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak
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50 Perfectly Timed Animal Photos
Wildlife photography is much more demanding than you would ever think. Imagine sitting half immersed in water with mosquitos swarming around, sitting in the sweltering heat for countless hours, or spending a night in the woods in winter, all the while keeping very quiet and still, so to gain the trust of wild animals and getting the perfect shot. Not to mention, that you have to be really lucky, and the animal does show up at all. Wildlife photography is a combination of patience, time, skill, love for the animal, and luck. And with luck, you can get award-worthy perfectly timed photos, so incredible that if you blinked you would have missed it!
We have rounded 50 examples of perfect timing while capturing these funny animals – all these photos seem like pure luck.
But remember, there’s much more behind it than luck, and as a popular saying goes: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Scroll down below to check our compilation of the amazing, fascinating and sometimes funny animal pictures!
Image credits: buzzfeed
Image credits: buzzfeed
Photo by David Maitland
Photo by Urs Schmidli
Photo by Hakan Pekbelgin
Photo by Yvonne Van Eck
Photo by Mahmoud Edeeb
Photo by Pam Mullins
Photo by Tustel Ico
Photo by: José Luis Rodríguez
Photo by Anders Grönlund
Photo by Zoltan Gyori
Photo by yaki zander
Photo by Vedran Vidak
Photo by yaki zander
Photo by cherly
Photo by Seth Casteel
Photo by Marsel van Oosten
Photo by Harry Roekens
Photo by Marco Sartori
Photo by Carli Davidson
Photo by nissim
Photo by Roeselien Raimond
Photo by Marina Cano
Photo by shimi eni
Photo by Eigil Rasmussen
Photo by: Ric Seet
Photo by Rick Ehrenberg
Photo by Geoffrey Baker
Photo by Peter Winnan
Photo by Conrad Tan
Photo by mehmet karaca
Photo by Ron Bielefeld
Photo by Peter Dam
Photo by Chris Fallows
Photo by John&Fish
Image credits: buzzfeed
Image credits: buzzfeed
Image author: unknown
Image credits: buzzfeed
Image credits: buzzfeed
Photo by Ian Rentoul
Image credits: buzzfeed
Image credits: buzzfeed
Image credits: buzzfeed
Image credits: buzzfeed
Photo by Peter Dam
Image author: unknown
Image author: unknown
Photo by Darin Crofton
Cool pictures on avu with animals (55 photos) • Entertainment pictures
The best funny collection with different animals in clothes. Here you will find avatars with a bear, wolf, tiger, cat, dog, monkey, gorilla, llama, ostrich, hedgehog, fox, donkey, bull, tiger, lion, giraffe, owl, penguin, sloth, deer, hare and other animals. We bring to your attention cool pictures on ava with animals.
Cool brown bear in a sweater with skulls. nine0003
Cool deer in a sheepskin coat for an avatar with animals.
A cool white lion in a denim jacket and a cap.
Cool gorilla in a leather jacket.
Ash cat in a shirt with palm trees on an ava with animals.
Serious dog in a vest.
Cool dude dog in a yellow jacket for an avatar with animals.
Fashionable red fox in a coral shirt and chain. nine0003
Cool animal ava - kangaroo in a shirt with a butterfly.
Cool donkey in a striped shirt for profile picture.
A cute rabbit in a blue jacket on an animal avu.
Leopard in a leather jacket with a red scarf.
Cool picture on the avu with animals - a panda in a denim shirt with a red butterfly.
White cat in a sweater.
Cool polar bear in a scarf. nine0003
Cool animal avatar - a brown bear in a green sweater.
Wolf is an office worker.
A beautiful owl in a kimono on an avu with animals.
Cute squirrel in a pink bomber jacket.
Cool ava with animals - a lynx in a striped T-shirt in the picture.
Gorilla jock in short sleeve shirt.
Avatar with a gentleman wolf.
Cool hippo in a yellow windbreaker on an avu with animals.
Kitten in a cute hat.
Cool animal avatar - Pug in a cap.
Trendy hippopotamus in a yellow cap on avu.
Stylish lion in a sheepskin coat.
Cool dog in a gray coat in the picture on the animal ava.
Ostrich in a black hat.
Giraffe in a pink coat with earrings for an animal profile picture. nine0003
A monkey in a beige coat sticks out its tongue.
Cool raccoon in a shirt and vest.
Cool animal ava - monkey in jacket and cap.
A strong rhinoceros in a black leather jacket.
The animal avatar is a bear with a pink scarf.
Kotik is an office worker.
Cool koala with a shirt with flowers on an animal ava.
A funny raccoon in a shirt and vest.
Cool dog in a yellow sweatshirt on an ava with animals.
A cool animal in a gray leather jacket for the avatar.
A funny deer in a red leather jacket.
Gray wolf for an avatar with animals in a shirt and tie.
Fluffy cowboy cat in a hat.
Cool tiger in a denim shirt in the picture on the animal ava. nine0003
Sheep in dark green leather jacket.
Giraffe in a warm sweater on the avatar.
Cool Leopard Pilot.
Cool black bull in an inflated patent leather jacket for an avatar with animals.
Fashionable teddy bear in a black hat.
Rabbit in a shirt and knitted vest.
A monkey dressed as a chef on an avu with animals.
