African ostrichs are seen during sunny autumn day in the largest ostrich farm “Nornieki” in Snepele, Latvia, 18 October 2021. (Photo by Toms Kalnins/EPA/EFE)

Russian Communist party activists and supporters carry portraits of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin (R) and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin (L) as they attend a flowers-laying ceremony at the Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square in downtown Moscow on November 7, 2021, marking the 104th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution also known as the October Revolution. (Photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP Photo)

A male stag beetle walks on a branch in an oak forest near the Spree River in Kersdorf, Brandenburg, Germany, on June 8, 2025. (Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images)

A woman looks out from her stall selling traditional garments and textiles at a market in Ashgabat February 8, 2012. (Photo by Aman Mehinli/Reuters)

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)

Musicians of the alphorn band "Holdersberger Alp- Traum- Blaeser" perform their skills on a raft floating on the Elbsee lake near Aitrang, southern Germany, on June 11, 2017. (Photo by Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP Photo/DPA)

Residents in fox makeup participate in the Oji Fox parade to thank the outgoing and welcome the incoming year at the Oji Inari shrine in Tokyo late on December 31, 2017. (Photo by Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP Photo)