Residents in fox makeup participate in the Oji Fox parade to thank the outgoing and welcome the incoming year at the Oji Inari shrine in Tokyo late on December 31, 2017. (Photo by Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP Photo)

Musicians of the alphorn band "Holdersberger Alp- Traum- Blaeser" perform their skills on a raft floating on the Elbsee lake near Aitrang, southern Germany, on June 11, 2017. (Photo by Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP Photo/DPA)

Bloodthirsty by Thomas P. Peschak, Germany/South Africa — winner, Behaviour: birds. When rations run short on Wolf Island, in the remote northern Galápagos, the sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies and other large birds. The finches rely on a scant diet of seeds and insects, which regularly dries up, so they drink blood to survive. ‘I’ve seen more than half a dozen finches drinking from a single Nazca booby,’ says Tom. Rather than leave their nests the boobies tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

The secretive indri (Indri indri) of Madagascar, the largest living lemur. It is also critically endangered and highly evolutionarily distinct with no close relatives, which makes its branch one of most precarious on the mammal evolutionary tree. In the likely event that the indri goes extinct, we will lose 19m years of unique evolutionary history from the mammal tree of life. (Photo by Pierre-Yves Babelon/Aarhus University)

Germany's Laura Siegemund celebrates with France's Edouard Roger-Vasselin after winning the mixed doubles final against Britain's Neal Skupski and Desirae Krawczyk of the U.S. at the French Open in Paris on June 6, 2024. (Photo by Yves Herman/Reuters)

Thai classical dancers perform for Phra Phrom, the Thai interpretation of the Hindu god Brahma, at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, September 4, 2015. Thai authorities unveiled the restored centerpiece Friday of the Erawan Shrine, in the latest bid to restore confidence among Bangkok's tourism and business communities almost three weeks after a deadly bombing. (Photo by Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo)

Individuals and populations student winner. Limbing in the Tropics, photographed in Manaus, Brazil. While walking in the Amazon rainforest looking for bat roosts to set up mist nets to capture bats for scientific research, a faint and almost imperceptible noise suddenly caught this photographer’s attention. An anteater was climbing with exceptional ability in a tangled mess of branches and lianas. (Photo by Adrià López Baucells/University of Lisbon/British Ecological Society)

African ostrichs are seen during sunny autumn day in the largest ostrich farm “Nornieki” in Snepele, Latvia, 18 October 2021. (Photo by Toms Kalnins/EPA/EFE)