Merit Prize Winner: “A Well Earned Rest in the Sahara”. This photo of Moussa Macher, our Tuareg guide, was taken at the summit of Tin-Merzouga, the largest dune (or erg) in the Tadrat region of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria. Moussa rested while waiting for us to finish our 45-minute struggle to the top. It only took ten minutes of rolling, running, and jumping to get back down. The Tadrat is part of the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park World Heritage area, famous for its red sand and engravings and rock paintings of cattle, elephants, giraffes, and rhinos that lived there when the climate was milder. Photo location: Summit of Tin-Merzouga, Tadrat, Tassili N'Ajjer National Park, Algeria. (Photo and caption by Evan Cole/National Geographic Photo Contest)

A young anoa, also known as midget buffalo, named Tycoon runs around at the Zoo in Berlin, Germany, on November 9, 2012. (Photo by Maurizio Gambarini/EPA)

Pfc. Sebastian Rodriguez, machine gunner, Weapons Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, Marine Rotational Force – Darwin, fires an M240 machine gun during a night squad-attack exercise, here, May 22, 2013. (Photo by Sgt. Sarah Fiocco/U.S. Marines)

A Palestinian man bathes his camel in the sea during a dust storm in Gaza City on March 23, 2021. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

Australian professional basketball player Liz Cambage shows off her extensive tattoo collection in a tiny black bikini while having a smoke on the beach in Miami on April 7, 2021. (Photo by The Mega Agency/Profimedia)

A worker carries a carp freshwater fish at a breeding site in Iraq's central city of Najaf, on June 13, 2021. (Photo by Ali Najafi/AFP Photo)

A waxworks artist retouches one of the wax figures at the unveiling of Little Mix waxwork figures at Madame Tussauds, in London, Britain, July 28, 2021. (Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters)

Iraqi boys swim with a herd of buffaloes in the Diyala River in the Faziliah district, east of Baghdad on August 2, 2021, amid extreme summer temperatures. As Iraq bakes under a blistering summer heat wave, its hard-scrabble farmers and herders are battling severe water shortages that are killing their animals, fields and way of life. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP Photo)