Here are the bravest of the brave in 2016. Weve gathered some of the finest images showing daredevils taking their lives into their own hands and going to the very brink this year. Whether they are perched hundreds of feet up on a high wire, courageously clinging to a rockface or taking on a volcano, these adventurers take the breath away. Here: Morgane Choquet and Samuel Cobb relax in a vertical campsite on the slopes of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park. (Photo by Alexandre Eggermont/Caters News)

A monkey chews on a brazillian tourist's hair at the Pra Prang Sam Yod temple during the Lopburi Monkey Festival on November 28, 2021 in Lop Buri, Thailand. Lopburi holds its annual Monkey Festival where local citizens and tourists gather to provide a banquet to the thousands of long-tailed macaques that live in central Lopburi. (Photo by Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images)

This photo taken on May 17, 2019 shows rough rubies displayed at the gems market in Mogok town, north of Mandalay. Burrowing deep underground, thousands of informal miners risk their lives to find gleaming red gems as a law change spurs opportunity in Myanmar's “land of rubies”. (Photo by Ye Aung Thu/AFP Photo)

A handout photo made available by the World Press Photo (WPP) organization on 13 February 2017 shows a picture by Rossiya Segodnya photographer Valery Melnikov that won the Long-Term Projects – First Prize award of the 60th annual World Press Photo Contest, it was announced by the WPP Foundation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on 13 February 2017. Caption: Civilians escape from a fire at a house destroyed by an air attack in the Luhanskaya village. (Photo by Valery Melnikov/EPA/Rossiya Segodnya/World Press Photo)

The unromantic gypsies. Children boxing in a gypsy camp in Kent, England on July 1, 1951. Like all boys these gypsy lads like to try their hand at boxing. Encouraged by their friends they fight it out on Corke's Meadow. Few Romanies now live a life of wandering romance. Most are like the three hundred squatters of Corke's Meadow, Kent, which is part of a “gypsy problem” that involves about 100,000 today. Of those about 25,000 can be rightly called gypsies, the rest are Mumpers and Posh-rats and Hobos. Corke's Meadow has both kinds. “Picture Post” cameraman Bert Hardy photographs the Corke's Meadow gypsies in their encampment. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)

Roof-topping enthusiast Daniel Lau takes a selfie with high-rise buildings down below as he stands on the top of a skyscraper in Hong Kong, China on August 15, 2017. A craze that began in Russia has now taken hold in Hong Kong, one of the world's most vertical cities. Mr Lau said he had been inspired by Russian climbers and that he was unafraid of the vertiginous heights he scales. (Photo by ImagineChina/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Robot inventor Wu Yulu sits on a rickshaw driven by a robot which he invented in his village in rural Beijing's Tongzhou district, China, 17 November 2016. The 54-year-old Chinese farmer living in rural Beijing's Tongzhou district invented 63 robots in the past 30 years. Wu, who only received primary school education, plans to give up the agricultural work for his robot products. He regularly participates in exhibitions, transfers patent rights and teaches at the university to earn money. (Photo by Wu Hong/EPA)

Looking for love by Tony Wu, USA. Highly commended, Animal Portraits. “Accentuating his mature appearance with pastel colours, protruding lips and an outstanding pink forehead, this Asian sheepshead wrasse sets out to impress females and see off rivals, which he will head-butt and bite, near Japan’s remote Sado Island. Individuals start out as females, and when they reach a certain age and size – up to a metre (more than 3 feet) long – can transform into males. Long-lived and slow-growing, the species is intrinsically vulnerable to overfishing”. (Photo by Tony Wu/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)