An alpaca chewing a leaf is pictured on November 18, 2014 in the zoo of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. (Photo by Frank Rumpenhorst/AFP Photo/DPA)

16-year-old panda, Ye Ye, rests in an enclosure at the Wolong Nature Reserve, a conservation center that trains pandas for release into the wild. This image was published in the August 2016 National Geographic magazine as part of the “Pandas Gone Wild” story. (Photo by Ami Vitale/National Geographic Creative)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)

A Panasonic Toughpad is displayed during a press event at The Venetian for the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) January 9, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs from January 10-13 and is expected to feature 2,700 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to about 140,000 attendees. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

A member of the Fuerza Civil (Civil Force) police unit takes part in a simulated crime situation during a media presentation to show the police model that the federal government wants for the rest of the country, at the police academy in Monterrey December 17, 2014. Fuerza Civil, a tactical team of the police unit trained by the army, was created by the Nuevo Leon government in 2011 to curb down corruption and infiltration by drug gangs in the police corps, local media reported. Promising a new law to stop the infiltration of local governments by organized crime, President Enrique Pena Nieto pledged to reform the penal system and send an proposal to Congress to unify multi-layered police forces in Mexico's 31 states. (Photo by Daniel Becerril/Reuters)

Tim Laman is a field biologist and wildlife photojournalist. His pioneering research in the rain forest canopy in Borneo led to a PhD from Harvard and his first National Geographic article in 1997. Since then, he has pursued his passion for exploring wild places and documenting little-known and endangered wildlife by becoming a regular contributor to National Geographic. He has eighteen articles to his credit to date, all of which have had a conservation message. Some have focused on endangered species such as Orangutans or Hornbills, while others, such as a series of articles on Conservation International’s Biodiversity Hotspots, have highlighted regions under intense pressure.

This image is NGC 6543 known as the Cat's Eye Nebula as it appears to the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Telescope. A planetary nebula is a phase of stellar evolution that the sun should experience several billion years from now, when it expands to become a red giant and then sheds most of its outer layers, leaving behind a hot core that contracts to form a dense white dwarf star. This image was released October 10, 2012. (Photo by J. Kastner/NASA/CXC/RIT)