Bloodthirsty by Thomas P. Peschak, Germany/South Africa — winner, Behaviour: birds. When rations run short on Wolf Island, in the remote northern Galápagos, the sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies and other large birds. The finches rely on a scant diet of seeds and insects, which regularly dries up, so they drink blood to survive. ‘I’ve seen more than half a dozen finches drinking from a single Nazca booby,’ says Tom. Rather than leave their nests the boobies tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

The secretive indri (Indri indri) of Madagascar, the largest living lemur. It is also critically endangered and highly evolutionarily distinct with no close relatives, which makes its branch one of most precarious on the mammal evolutionary tree. In the likely event that the indri goes extinct, we will lose 19m years of unique evolutionary history from the mammal tree of life. (Photo by Pierre-Yves Babelon/Aarhus University)

A woman jumps out of a street art object in the center of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev during a warm autumn day on September 25, 2020. (Photo by Sergei Supinsky/AFP Photo)

Students from the Liceo Parini school celebrate the end of term in Milan, Italy on June 6, 2024. (Photo by Marco Ottico/LaPresse/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Burdened with a shawl full of her belongings, a woman stops for a rest on the road between Julaca and Puno in Peru. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images). Circa 1955

A man is seen wrapped with pythons, some which include the Albino Burmese Python, as part of a show celebrating the coming Year of the Snake in the Chinese calendar, while spectators look on, in Malabon city, north of Manila, Philippines, December 28, 2012. (Photo by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

A villager carries his injured daughter following a 5.6-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 162 people, with hundreds injured and others missing in Cianjur on November 22, 2022. (Photo by Aditya Aji/AFP Photo)

A Humboldt penguin swims in a pool during the annual stock take at ZSL London Zoo in London, Thursday, January 2, 2020. Caring for more than 500 different species, ZSL London Zoo's keepers face the challenging task of tallying up every animal large and small, every mammal, bird, reptile, fish and invertebrate at the Zoo. (Photo by Frank Augstein/AP Photo)