A) 1st place WINNER – Roy Rimmer. “This rat was in an outdoor set I made, the set up is two meters long and a meter wide made of Perspex,it has a plywood front with holes cut in for my camera and flash guns, I placed two rusty paint cans in the set up and the rat would leap from one can too the other, I had to use flash to freeze the action”.

Santi Diaz Mosquera, 41, a “percebeiro” (barnacle fisherman), collects barnacles on rocks on the coast of Ferrol, in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia, December 15, 2016. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

A Nepalese woman offers prayers to the setting Sun on the bank of Bagmati River during the Chhath Puja festival in Kathmandu, Nepal, Wednesday, November 10, 2021. During Chhath, an ancient Hindu festival, rituals are performed to thank the Sun God for sustaining life on earth. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

Participants of the 77th edition of the annual Christmas swimming 'Coupe de Noel' jump into the waters of Lake Geneva, in Geneva, Switzerland, 20 December 2015. More than 1,540 men and women braved the water temperature of just 8 degrees Celsius as they swam a 120 meters distance at the traditional Christmas swimming in Geneva. (Photo by Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA)

“Microscope images forge an extraordinary bond between science and art, said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Olympus America's Vice President and General Manager for the Scientific Equipment Group. We founded this competition to focus on the fascinating stories coming out of today's life science research laboratories. The thousands of images that people have shared with the competition over the years reflect some of the most exciting work going on in research today – work that can help shed light on the living universe and ultimately save lives. We look at BioScapes and these beautiful images as sources of education and inspiration to us and the world”. – OlympusBioScapes

Photo: Pretarsus of the third leg of a female drone fly (Eristalis tenax), ventral view, by Dr. Jan Michels, Institute of Zoology, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany. (Photo by Olympus BioScapes)

Participants of the 79th edition of the annual Christmas swimming “Coupe de Noel” jump into the Lake Geneva, in Geneva, Switzerland, Sunday, December 17, 2017. More than 2000 men and women swam the 120 meters at the traditional Christmas swimming in Geneva where the water temperature was 6 degrees. (Photo by Martial Trezzini/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Shura Kitata of Ethiopia runs past cardboard cut-outs of the Duke of Cambridge and the Queen at the London Marathon in London, Britain, 04 October 2020. (Photo by Tom Jenkins/The Guardian)

Police officers detain an opposition protester during a May Day rally in Saint Petersburg, Russia on May 1, 2019. Labor Day or May Day is observed all over the world on the first day of the month of May to celebrate the economic and social achievements of workers and fight for laborers rights. (Photo by Igor Russak/Reuters)