People and Nature category winner: Why did the sloth cross the road? by Andrew Whitworth (Osa Conservation and University of Glasgow), taken in Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. “I was driving out from the Osa Peninsula, located on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica on a dark, stormy day. This female three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus) had luckily just about made it across the road, and the drivers of the Toyota on this occasion had spotted her in good time”. (Photo by Andrew Whitworth/2019 British Ecological Society Photography Competition)

A Mongolian Shamaness or Buu, beats her drum while taking part with others in a fire ritual meant to summon spirits to mark the period of the Summer Solstice in the grasslands on June 22, 2018 outside Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Banned for 70 years under Communist rule, shamanism has seen a resurgence in Mongolia since 1992, when the ancient practice became protected by the country's Constitution. Known as Tengrism, in which Shamans channel ancestral spirits, it is widely regarded as Mongolia's national religion and part of its indigenous identity. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

A thirsty timber wolf, Lithuania, 2018. (Photo by Erikas Plucas/Alamy Stock Photo)

A pupil arrives on the first day of school at Yas American Academy in Abu Dhabi in the last decade of August 2025. (Photo by Victor Besa/The National)

Cosplayers attend Comic-Con International in San Diego, California on July 27, 2024. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Reuters)

Three prostitutes lean out of a window in Santiago, Chile, in an attempt to entice customers inside, circa 1950. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)

Vanessa, thirty-five, had three children with an abusive husband. She “lost her mind, started doing heroin”, after losing the children, who were taken away and given to her mother. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. She grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, but now spends her time in Hunts Point, “trying to survive everyday. Just doing whatever it takes”.

Dramatic thunder and lightning striking Portsmouth in Hampshire, South East England last night, July 9, 2023, captured from the Isle of Wight. (Photo by Jamie Russell/Bournemouth News)