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)

People in costumes are pictured during the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival on 5th Ave in New York, Sunday, April 9, 2023. (Photo by Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo)

Wearing hats and dancing to Sodapop. As the popularity of “K-Pop Demon Hunters (K-Pop Demon Hunters)” spreads around the world, foreign tourists wearing hats and dancing to the K-Pop Demon Hunters song “Sodapop” are seen in Gwanghwamun, Seoul on the afternoon of the August 29, 2025. (Photo by Park Seong-won)

Businesswoman with skirt caught in underwear. Image shot 2008, exact date unknown. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)

A monkey carrying a puppy are seen around the park in Dhaka, Bangladesh on November 11, 2022. A monkey was spotted carrying a puppy around the park. The monkey also carried the puppy on its lap and was seen jumping from a tree's branches. Even though monkeys and dogs do not necessarily bond, a different animal friendly relationship was seen in Dhaka. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

An aerial view of Charyn Canyon located about 200 kilometers east of Almaty city in Kazakhstan on September 22, 2024. The canyon, visited by more than 50,000 people each year, was placed under protection in 1964 and became part of the Charyn National Park, established on February 23, 2004. (Photo by Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Prayer flags fly at Namgyal Tsemo Monastery above the town of Leh in Ladakh, India September 24, 2016. High in the Indian Himalayas, young novice monks in maroon robes take their lessons inside the 15th-century Thiksey monastery. (Photo by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)

Individuals and populations student winner. Limbing in the Tropics, photographed in Manaus, Brazil. While walking in the Amazon rainforest looking for bat roosts to set up mist nets to capture bats for scientific research, a faint and almost imperceptible noise suddenly caught this photographer’s attention. An anteater was climbing with exceptional ability in a tangled mess of branches and lianas. (Photo by Adrià López Baucells/University of Lisbon/British Ecological Society)