The latest winners of the 'Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018' have been revealed – and they're as impressive as ever.
This contest is run by the Natural History Museum and it was the 55th year. More than 45,000 entries from wildlife photographers across 95 countries had been submitted

Here are some of the most spectacular winning entries.



Winner, Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles
'Hellbent': It was not looking good for the northern water snake, clamped tightly in the jaws of a hungry hellbender, but it was a remarkable find for David. Drifting downstream in Tennessee’s Tellico River, in search of freshwater life (as he had done for countless hours over the past seven years), he was thrilled to spot the mighty amphibian with its struggling prey. When the attacker tried to reposition its bite, wrinkly folds of skin rippling, the snake pushed free from its jaws and escaped. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ David Herasimtschuk)



Grand Title Winner
'The golden couple': A male Qinling golden snub-nosed monkey rests briefly on a stone seat. He has been joined by a female from his small group. Both are watching intently as an altercation takes place down the valley between the lead males of two other groups in the 50-strong troop. It’s spring in the temperate forest of China’s Qinling Mountains, the only place where these endangered monkeys live. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Marsel van Oosten)



Winner, Animals in their environment
'Bed of seals': A small ice floe in the Errera Channel at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula provides barely enough room for a group of crabeater seals to rest, and the cracks are starting to show. Crabeater seals are widespread in Antarctica and possible the most abundant of all seals anywhere. But they are also depended on sea ice, for resting, breeding, avoiding predators such as killer whales and leopard seals, and accessing feeding areas. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Cristobal Serrano)



Winner, Wildlife Photographer Portfolio Award
'Mother defender': A large Alchisme treehopper guards her family as the nymphs feed on the stem of a nightshade plant in El Jardín de los Sueños reserve in Ecuador. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Joan de la Malla)



Winner, Behaviour: Invertebrates
'Mud-rolling mud dauber': It was a hot summer day, and the waterhole at Walyormouring Nature Reserve, Western Australia, was buzzing. Georgina had got there early to photograph birds, but her attention was stolen by the industrious slender mud-dauber wasps, distinctive with their stalk-like first abdominal segments. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Georgina Steytler)



Winner, Behaviour: Mammals
'Kuhirwa mourns her baby': Kuhirwa, a young female member of the Nkuringo mountain gorilla family in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, would not give up on her dead baby. What Ricardo first thought to be a bundle of roots turned out to be the tiny corpse. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Ricardo Nunez Montero)



Winner, Wildlife Photojournalist Award: Story
'Signature tree': A male jaguar sharpens his claws and scratches his signature into a tree on the edge of his mountain territory in the Sierra de Vallejo in Mexico’s western state of Nayarit. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Alejandro Prieto)



Winner, Wildlife Photojournalism
'The sad clown': Timbul, a young long-tailed macaque, instinctively puts his hand to his face to try to relieve the discomfort of the mask he has to wear in Java, Indonesia. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Joan de la Malla)



Winner, Under Water
'Night flight': On a night dive over deep water – in the Atlantic, far off Florida’s Palm Beach – Michael Patrick O’Neill achieved a long-held goal, to photograph a flying fish so as to convey the speed, motion and beauty of this ‘fantastic creature’. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Michael Patrick O’Neill)



Winner, Behaviour: Birds
'Blood thirsty': 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 on the plateau. Rather than leave and expose their eggs and chicks to the sun, the boobies appear to tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Wildlife Photographer of the Year/ Thomas P Peschak)

Semenggoh Nature Reserve is home to 30 rescued orangutans in Borneo. The reserve offers visitors a rare chance to get a good look at one of man's closest relatives.

https://www.mymola.com/visiting-oranguta...-malaysia/

Many people argue the question as to why dinosaurs achieved such large sizes. Many argue that the skeletal design of dinosaurs (hollow bones) allowed them to obtain such masses. However, I dont think it is as simple as that. For instance, birds have hollow bones too but no bird in prehistory has exceeded 1 ton.

So please feel free to provide your theories below...

Bone and muscle strength is the key to a versus fight. It is the primary factor that influences the victor. Let us discuss about muscle and bone density or indirectly their strength.




https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/Ann...kaya.shtml

Illegal trade seizures: Rhino horn - Mapping the crimes


CHINA’S IVORY MARKET AFTER THE IVORY TRADE BAN IN 2018

DEMAND UNDER THE BAN - CHINA IVORY CONSUMPTION RESEARCH POST - BAN 2018

Hello，I am a tiger fun from China.And I want to learn knowledge on tiger from this forum.But my private message unable to work.I'm puzzled about that,what should I do?

 India, the only country in the world to have all the three prime members of big cat family, The Lion, The Tiger and the Leopard makes India one of the major attraction for the wildlife lover across the globe. This blog article is concentrating to give more specific information about all the big cats’ species found in India.

 Cats Species in India

1. Lion (Asiatic Lion)
2. Tiger
3. Leopard
4. Snow Leopard
5. Clouded Leopard
6. The Jungle Cat
7. The Golden Cat
8. Leopard Cat
9. Marbled Cat
10. Desert Cat
11. The Lynx
12. The Caracal
13. Pallas Cat
14. Fishing cat
15. Rusty spotted cat
    

The Giant Teratorn — Argentavis magnificens — was an absolutely enormous species of flying bird which lived in Argentina during the late Miocene, about six million years ago. As of now, it’s the largest species of flying bird ever discovered. It’s worth noting that the species could very well have had a much larger range than is currently known. It’s also worth mentioning that a very closely related species — also gigantic — lived until very recently along the west coast of North America, and no doubt had interactions with the people that lived there at the time
Argentavis magnificens possessed a wingspan probably somewhere between 23-30 feet, that’s about 2-3 times longer than that of the living bird with the largest wingspan –the Wandering Albatross. As far as morphology goes, it’s thought that its closest living relative is probably the Andean Condor — so just try to imagine an enormous condor and you wouldn’t be that far off.
It’s known that the Giant Teratorns possessed very stout, strong legs, with large feet — as a result they were likely good walkers. Their bill was also relatively large, with a hooked tip and a wide gape.

The current estimates on Argentavis magnificens size are:
Wingspan: approximately 23 feet
Wing area: 87.3 ft²
Wing loading: 84.6 N/m²
Body Length: 4.1 feet
Height: 5.6–6.6 feet
Mass: 154–171.6 lbs
As of now there isn’t really much known about the animal’s behavior, just speculation. Based on the size and structure of the wings it seems very likely that  A. magnificens flew primarily by soaring — only rarely relying on flapping flight, and only for short bursts. It seems likely as well that the species also used thermal currents for travel.
Credit to @simonstahli

I think we all should share the quotes related to nature and wild animals, sometime it is very encouraging. This thread is made specifically for this purpose..

Here are mine, I will post other with time:

Quote:A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there was an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man. --Thomas Huxley

Quote:There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more --Lord Byron

A kleptoparasite is an animal that routinely displaces accomplished predators from their kills. Some ( non-bear ) animals of the far distant past ( possibly ) includes Tyrannosaurus rex, Andrewsarchus, and Daeodon. The giant short-faced bears ( Arctodus and Arctotherium ) were probably kleptoparasites.

Feeding on Carrion and Prey of Other Predators
Brown bears are commonly consuming dead animals found by them (Zavatsky, 1979, Zyryanov, 1979, Kaletskaya, 1981, Zhiryakov, 1987 and Pazhetnov, 1990), including in Sikhote-Alin (Bromlei, 1965, Matyushkin, 1974, Darman, 1982, Yudin, 1993 and Zaitsev and Seryodkin, 2011). The results of the capture of bears conducted by us in the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve have shown that they are attracted to carrion (Seryodkin et al., 2005b). In 1992–2001 six brown bears were caught with the use of bait: three animals using meat bait and three — using fish bait. The rate of successful capture was much higher using these baits (560 days/individual), rather than using trails and marked trees (1196 days/individual). Meat baits are consumed by the animals in any season.

Besides dead and wounded animals bears eat the prey of other predators and the remnants of their meals in Sikhote-Alin. Most often, the bears consume prey of tigers and lynxes (Matyushkin, 1974, Kostoglod, 1976 and Seryodkin et al., 2005a). A case of using the prey of yellow-throated marten is known (Zaitsev, 1991). Large bears cannot only eat up remains after tigers, but also chase them off their prey or join the fight (Sysoev, 1966, Kucherenko, 1971, Kostoglod, 1976 and Seryodkin et al., 2005a). In the snow period some bears purposely track tigers and lynxes to find the remains or take away their prey (Kostoglod, 1976 and Seryodkin et al., 2012). According to observations of Kostoglod, the trail of a bear not settled in its lair tracking other predators in order to capture their prey was 22% of the total length of the bear trail (44 km out of 200 km) (Kostoglod, 1976). In the spring before snow melting bears look for animals which died during winter and prey of tigers buried in snow (Seryodkin et al., 2005a). For this purpose bears go along the floodplain of a river or a creek, often leaving the path to examine interesting places, winding, sometimes stopping to sniff. A bear is able to smell the odor of the remains of an animal at a distance of 250 m at a temperature below 0 °C. Bears also go in the footsteps of their relatives, picking uneaten remains of carrion. Snowtracking of three brown bears in the basin of a creek in the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve in April revealed that along the 17 km trail the bears have four times found the remains of red deer crushed by tigers during the winter, and once — a whole red deer that died of a broken limb. In three cases other bears have been on these tiger prey before them.

Behavior Near Prey or Carrion
Covering the prey with soil, forest cover, branches and other forest products is typical, but not necessary for brown bears in Sikhote-Alin (Matyushkin, 1974). The burial of the prey may be complete when the whole animal is hidden, or partial. Apparently, the act of covering primarily provides saving the prey from spongers, as the bear's prey attracts corvid birds, and the predator guards it from them (Pazhetnov, 1990). On the Kola Peninsula, burying of the remnants allows to distinguish the bear's prey from accidental carrion (Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, 1972). For the Sikhote-Alin this assumption is not true. Out of 28 known cases of brown bears feeding on dead bodies of animals in 8 cases (28.6%) the burial occurred. Four times out of five bears were burying their prey, twice — the prey of tigers (out of 20), in both cases the tigers were chased off by the bears, and twice the bears buried dead wounded animals found by them. It is clear from these data that the bears are more likely to bury whole carcasses of animals rather than their remains left after other predators.
A brown bear may cover its prey after he had already started to eat it (Matyushkin, 1974), or after burying the carcass, may wait for some time without eating it. In the latter case, covering the prey with the forest cover by maintaining the temperature contributes to faster fermentation processes that make fresh meat “ripe” that is more attractive for animals (Korytin, 1998). We know of two cases when brown bears buried dead animals, but did not eat them at once. In the first case, a bear buried a dead wounded boar and returned to the place of burial on the third day. In another case, a brown bear that killed another brown bear covered it with forest cover and left the place without touching the food. For covering a red dear one of predators had to dig up and bring to the center the soil and forest cover from an area of 60 m2. The author also observed Kamchatka brown bears waiting for “ripening” of dead prey. A large male bear began to eat a buried female bear three days after procuring it at Kronotskaya River (Kronotsky Reserve) in September 2003.