Polar Bear Cuddles Up to Shrinking Iceberg in Winning Wildlife Photograph

The annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London, highlights the joys and sorrows of animals worldwide. This image may seem shocking, but it has a happy ending: The rescued chimpanzee isn't in a zoo but inside an enclosure at the Chimpanzee Conservation Center in the Republic of Guinea. The center houses orphaned chimpanzees that have been rescued from being sold as pets after their mothers were killed for bushmeat. The center rehabilitates the chimpanzees with the aim of releasing them back into the National Park of Upper Niger.

For CNET's insights and advice on photography, see how AI factors into what's true in photos, how HDR technology brings striking realism, depth and detail and how an old phone can still take awesome photos.   

This touching image won the top People's Choice award in the Natural History Museum's 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year photography contest. Nima Sarikhani spent three days searching for polar bears to photograph before capturing a young male who found a remaining iceberg, clawed out a bed and drifted off to sleep in Norway's Svalbard archipelago. "Whilst climate change is the biggest challenge we face, I hope that this photograph also inspires hope," Sarikhani said in a statement. "There is still time to fix the mess we have caused."

For more on climate change and what's being done about it, see our CNET Zero series.

Moon jellyfish swarm a fjord outside Tromsø in northern Norway, illuminated by the aurora borealis. The photographer sheltered his equipment in a self-made waterproof housing.

Photographer Daniel Denecescu spent hours following starlings performing spellbinding aerial shows, known as murmurations, around the city and suburbs of Rome. He finally caught the moment when the swirling flock formed the shape of a giant bird.

In Kenya's Maasai Mara, female lionesses share their cubs with other moms in the pride. Here, two females give a youngster a good grooming after a night of hunting.

Two courting mountain hares come together to touch noses in the Monadhliath Mountains in Scotland.

Summer greens and blues provide the perfect backdrop for the chestnut tones of the Ethiopian wolf's coat in this serene image taken in Ethiopia's Bale Mountains National Park. This is the rarest species of wild dog in the world, and there are only a few hundred left.

Standing on a rock in the Judean Foothills of Israel, a red fox cub locks eyes with the shrew it had thrown up in the air moments earlier. 

A bull elephant kicks over garbage as it scavenges for rotten vegetables and fruit at a dump in Tissamaharama, Sri Lanka. Male elephants come here not only for the rubbish but also for nearby crops. The scar from a gunshot wound on the upper part of this elephant's left front leg and another wound high on its back indicate he's an insistent crop raider.

These coats, made from the skins of some of the most endangered big cats, were confiscated by European customs officers and held for forensic tests before being used for educational events. On average, the fur industry uses 12 animals to make one coat.

A wood duck and its brood are caught in a late spring snowstorm in Smiggin Holes, New South Wales, Australia. Thanks to the La Niña effect, the ducklings exited their nest into a frozen world rather than the warmer temperatures they are used to and quickly became lost in a snowstorm as their mother frantically tried to lead them to open water. 

A Celebes crested macaque investigates the contents of a plastic bottle from a pile ready for recycling on a beach at the edge of Tangkoko Batuangus Nature Reserve, Indonesia. The macaques have learned that these bottles contain liquid and that the colored bottles often have sweet liquid, their preference. They are often seen chewing off the caps to reach the contents.

A snowshoe hare pulls its large back feet up to its head to make the next big hop across the soft, deep snow in the forests of the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Its large feet prevent the hare from sinking into the deep, soft snow, acting like snowshoes and giving the species its wintery name.

A pygmy round-eared bat in the lowland forests of Costa Rica returns to its termite-nest home as two well-camouflaged family members peek out.

Near Montpellier, France, a cuckoo wasp is captured mid-air trying to enter a mason bee's clay burrow as a smaller cuckoo wasp cleans its wings below. 

Under the watchful eye of its mother in South Africa's Greater Kruger National Park, a curious lion cub walks toward the photographer, who was watching from a vehicle. 

Positioning their camera among cornflowers in Eastern Germany, the photographers watched as the swallows continuously flew low over the meadow, catching insects on the wing. Using a remote control, they took this picture as one of the swallows flew over the camera. 

A grizzly bear rises up on its hind legs and glances toward the photographer before returning to fish for salmon in the Chilko River in British Columbia, Canada. 

A humpback whale calf misses some of its mother's milk, which drifts and swirls in the currents off the coast of Rurutu, French Polynesia.  

A gelada monkey suckles its baby alongside a companion at the edge of a plateau in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia. 

A young male red fox takes advantage of a bin stacked high with rubbish before collection day on a street in London. The photographer watched as, over time, the fox learned the best time to climb into the box, when the rubbish was piled high and any discarded food that rested on top was easy to get.

A mudskipper fiercely defends its territory from a trespassing crab in Roebuck Bay, Australia.

An Adélie penguin approaches an emperor penguin and its chick during feeding time in Antarctica's Atka Bay. If the chance arises, Adélie penguins will try to cause the emperor adult or chick to drop its food while the chick is being fed, snatching any that falls to the ground. 

A Balkan pond turtle shares a moment with a northern banded groundling dragonfly in Israel's Jezreel Valley. Photographer Tzahi Finkelstein was photographing shore birds when this unexpected interaction occurred.

A painting-like composition of bulrushes and quaking aspens is framed in a small corner of the Cabriel River in the Sierra de Albarracín Mountains, Spain.