South Africa traffics thousands of endangered wild animals to China in ‘corrupt and growing’ trade, investigation finds

Stop the Wildlife Trade: Chimps, monkeys, giraffes, tigers and lions illegally sold by exporters linked to crime syndicates, study finds

South African traders with China are illegally selling thousands of wild animals threatened with extinction and endangered, under the guise of legal exports, according to an investigation.

Monkeys have been stolen from the wild, and together with cheetahs, tigers, rhinos, lions and meerkats, they have been trafficked to circuses, theme parks, laboratories, zoos and “safari parks”, researchers found.

Their report says at least 5,035 live wild animals were exported to China from 2016 to last year – “an extremely conservative” estimate – including chimpanzees and “a bewildering number” of giraffe, which “are also eaten in China”.

The researchers uncovered how some traders have links to international organised crime syndicates and the system is riddled with fake permits, but not a single offender has been prosecuted.

Tigers trained to ‘beg’ in a Chinese circus (Getty)

After arriving in China, where laws on captive-animal welfare are “non-existent”, South Africa’s animals often become untraceable or disappeared, suggesting they either died or were sold on, the report says.

To make matters worse, in a trade that is expanding, “treating wildlife as if it is merely a commodity to be farmed” risks “unleashing myriad Covid-type diseases”.

The South Africa-based groups Ban Animal Trading (BAT) and the charitable EMS Foundation, which examined wild animal exports from 2016-19, hit out at the supposed myth that legal trade crowds out the illegal trade and that animals are treated well in legal deals.

“The legal and illegal trade are so intertwined as to be functionally inseparable,” the report states. “The research demonstrates that South Africa’s live wild animal trade with China is riddled with irregularities that are exploited by traffickers. There are gaping loopholes in the global permitting, enforcement and oversight system.”

Zoos, as well as brokers and wholesale companies, are behind the trafficking of animals caught from the wild, going to destinations that are often pure fiction; most permits are in breach of regulations, and their verification largely absent, meaning most wild animal exports in 2016-19 were probably illegal, according to the report authors.

Regulation is “failing dismally, imparting a false sense of security for those who believe that the international trade in wildlife is justified and sustainable” while “such security is wildly misplaced and, far from contributing to conservation, the legal trade is one of the single biggest factors currently undermining conservation.”

The two groups examined the scope of South Africa’s trade with Beijing by visiting the claimed destinations, examining licences and analysing data from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

“Our investigation of theme parks and zoos revealed that nearly all trained primates are not bred in captivity, but were wild-caught and illegally traded out of Africa and Indonesia,” according to the study, which also says South African exotic primate breeders export hundreds of marmosets to Chinese laboratories or breeding farms each year.

And the trade in chimps violated several regulations, yet there were no repercussions, the groups said.

More than 100 South African giraffes were sent to a Chinese zoo that holds the world record for having the highest number of hybrid animals “which have zero conservation value”.

But a global system of paper export permits allows for pervasive fraud, with widespread false declarations by traders, agents and exporters, the research found, and “once animals leave South Africa it is impossible to identify where they will land up”.

The South African government says the country ranks as the fifth-richest in Africa and the 24th richest in the world for numbers of endemic species of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. It says rhino horn sales are subject to strict regulation including documentation.

South Africa is not the only country that sells wildlife to Asia. Zimbabwe has regularly exported young elephants to zoos in China since 2012 – 108 in all, according to Humane Society International.

Zimbabwe has previously said it has more elephants than it can cope with, and must be allowed to benefit from their numbers.

Demand in China for products made from all types of wildlife remains high, with a 2018 investigation finding tiger wine openly sold in shops. The report authors note that consumption of animals including tigers, threatening wild populations, is legitimised by captive breeding. There are more tigers in captivity in the world than in the wild, WWF figures show.

The report authors say photos taken at Chinese importing centres, showing barren enclosures, “tell their own story of animal welfare violation and naked greed”, while the wildlife trade allows Covid-type disease to spread.

Calling for “transformative changes” to prevent more wildlife exploitation, and prevent more coronaviruses, the study warns: “Nothing short of a global paradigm shift is necessary if we are to prevent further planetary disruption that unleashes Covid-type viruses.”

An elephant at a zoo in Wuhan, China; the country regularly imports African wildlife ( Getty )

The changes would include a ban on “wet” live animal markets, captive wild animal breeding and the stigmatisation of wildlife trade and consumption.

“Certainly there is no clear evidence that the legal trade somehow crowds out illegal trade,” the report says. “If anything, the presence of a legal trade … normalises consumption and triggers demand for wild-origin animals for commercial use and consumption.” And it condemns the idea of well regulated markets as a smokescreen for vested interests.

“Animals confined to life in captivity are welfare-deprived to the point that we are eroding our own humanity by continuing to endorse this system,” the document says.

Two years ago, a report by the same groups concluded South Africa’s growing trade in lion bones should be halted, and keeping and breeding lions and tigers should be curbed.

The Independent is campaigning for tighter regulation of the world’s wildlife trade.

(Source: Independent)

Experience: I live in a zoo

Every morning I wake up at 7am when our gibbon, Jimmy, starts singing. But under lockdown, it’s always quiet

live in the keepers’ lodge in London zoo. It’s a big shared house on site where eight zookeepers run a rota to care for the animals and man phones overnight. My mum loves telling people I live in Regent’s Park. I grew up in an animal-loving household. At one point there was me, Mum and Dad, two cats, two dogs, two rabbits, a hamster, a tortoise and a cockatoo, so it is normal for me to be surrounded by animals.

After studying marine biology at university, I worked for the RSPCA, taking in injured seals and ducklings near the Norfolk coast. But I had always had my sights set on London zoo. For two weeks, I went there every day, handing out my CV to anyone in a suit until I got an interview. I started work as a zookeeper in November 2001.

Eleven years later, I applied for it to become my home, too – a select group of experienced keepers are allowed to live on site in the lodge. It’s an experience like no other, and one every zookeeper wants. There’s a competitive interview process which includes vetting, problem-solving, and an assessment of your housemate credentials. It took me three attempts, but I eventually made the cut.

‘These days, I truly consider it home’: Lucy Hawley by London Zoo’s penguin pool. Photograph: Courtesy of ZSL

The responsibility was scary when I first moved in. Tiny noises startled me. I didn’t sleep for a month, even with security on site. 

These days, though, I consider it home. Every morning I wake up at seven when our gibbon, Jimmy, starts singing loudly. I take a coffee into the garden and chat to the harrier hawks and the ibis in the aviary behind the house. We’ve hand-reared baby animals in our lodge. We took turns to feed our sloth, Edward, through the night when his mother couldn’t, and built him a jungle gym from broom handles. Beanie, a newborn giant anteater, lived with us, too.

The best time is sunset, when the gates have closed. I’ll take a walk around and hear Bhanu, our male lion, roar and the ringtail lemurs crawl out and relax; it sounds as if they’re chuckling.

A keeper will say they don’t have favourite animals, but it’s a lie. Mine are small monkeys called emperor tamarins. I helped a pair breed a family of 10 by playing Barry White when I worked in the rainforest house.

I’m on overnight duty three times each fortnight, which can involve sleepless nights: answering building alarms, administering medicine to animals or taking calls from the public. Sometimes they’ve found injured animals, which we refer on to the RSPCA. Occasionally someone says an animal has escaped but I’ve never known it happen. Once, the police called for advice when a bag of snakes was dumped outside a tube station.

In normal times, I’m allowed to have friends over – as long as they don’t wander off – and we’re close to central London so I can go to the pub when I’m off-duty. My wife of two years lives down the road. When I’m not on duty, I’ll go to her or she’ll be here with me. When we got married, we took our guests around the zoo before opening time.

Coronavirus has changed everything. On 21 March, the zoo closed to the public for the first time since the second world war, so it’s always quiet now. Some keepers moved into our overnight visitor experience lodges and about 50 staff are still working shifts. I miss answering visitors’ questions and showing off our animals. The pygmy goats miss being petted and are getting extra massages from staff. We’ve hidden food for the meerkats to find, and puzzles for the squirrel monkeys. The big cats are less fussed and enjoy the spring sunshine.

We wear personal protective equipment to prepare food and activities. Colds have passed between humans and primates; we’re unsure if coronavirus can, but it’s important to be safe.

The animals are being well looked after but this is still a worrying time. The zoo is a charity, so entry tickets fund our conservation work, which filters through to scientists in the field. That’s all dried up now.

Living and working here is an unusual existence but, at 42, it can’t get any better for me. I have animals in my back garden that are threatened or extinct in the wild. Even though we’re in lockdown, if I feel low I can stretch my legs and have a chat with a lion or an okapi. It’s a dream job. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

(Source: The Guardian)

Coronavirus: Lions nap on road during South African lockdown

Sooner or later animals were going to notice that the humans had disappeared and in South Africa's Kruger National Park lions have been taking advantage.

Park ranger Richard Sowry was out on patrol on Wednesday when he snapped a pride sleeping on a road which would normally be busy with tourists.

But Kruger, like other wildlife parks, has been shut since 25 March as part of the coronavirus lockdown.

Big cats would usually only be seen by rangers on the roads by night.

RICHARD SOWRY/KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

How were the pictures taken?

As a ranger in one of Africa's largest game reserves, Mr Sowry performs an essential service and continues to work during the lockdown, checking on the wildlife and guarding against poachers.

While driving near Orpen Rest Camp on Wednesday afternoon, he spotted the lions on the road ahead and pulled up just five metres (5.5 yards) away to look at the unusual phenomenon.

As he took photos with his mobile phone, the lions did not seem bothered, most of them apparently fast asleep.

"Lions are used to people in vehicles," he explained. "All animals have much more of an instinctive fear of people on foot, so if I had walked up they would never have allowed me to get so close."

RICHARD SOWRY/KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

The oldest lioness in the pride is about 14, "which is very old for a lioness", so they are used to seeing vehicles.

Normally Mr Sowry would only see lions sleeping on the park's roads on colder nights in the winter, when the tar retains quite a lot of heat.

What rangers do not want, however, is for lions to start thinking that roads are a safe place just because they are now so still.

How is the lockdown affecting the park?

These quiet times have also seen lions as well as wild dogs venturing on to a golf course in the park but otherwise Mr Sowry does not think that the lockdown has had any major effect on the animals' behaviour yet.

RICHARD SOWRY/KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

"Kruger is a very wild place," he says. "It has been wild and it is still wild."

He is just happy to share his photos with people who cannot visit the park right now because of the coronavirus pandemic.

"These are difficult times for everyone and the intention was to bring people joy," he says.

To date, South Africa has recorded 34 deaths of people with Covid-19 and registered 2,506 cases of infection, making it the most affected country in Africa.

Its lockdown was extended on Wednesday by two weeks.

"Everybody realises the importance of the lockdown and the rangers are there to do their normal duties," says media officer Isaac Phaala. "To maintain the infrastructure takes quite a bit of work so that when the park opens, you don't start from scratch."

RICHARD SOWRY/KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

As for the lions, he adds, "normally they would be in the bushes because of the traffic but they are very smart and now they are enjoying the freedom of the park without us".

But why anyway, you might ask, would lions prefer tarmac to the softness of grass?

Probably for the simple reason that it had been raining on Tuesday night and, as Mr Phaala explained, "The tar was drier than the grass at the time - big cats and water don't mix."

(Source: BBC)

Coronavirus: Tiger at Bronx Zoo tests positive for Covid-19

A four-year-old female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo has tested positive for the coronavirus.

The tiger, named Nadia, is believed to be the first known case of an animal infected with Covid-19 in the US.

The Bronx Zoo, in New York City, says the test result was confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Iowa.

Nadia, along with six other big cats, is thought to have been infected by an asymptomatic zoo keeper.

The cats started showing symptoms, including a dry cough, late last month after exposure to the employee, who has not been identified.

"This is the first time that any of us know of anywhere in the world that a person infected the animal and the animal got sick," Paul Calle, the chief veterinarian at the zoo, told Reuters news agency on Sunday.

One of the Bronx Zoo's Malayan tigers. Getty Images

There have been isolated instances of pets testing positive for the coronavirus elsewhere in the world, but experts have stressed there is no evidence they can become sick or spread the disease.

Mr Calle said he intends to share the findings with other zoos and institutions researching the transmission of Covid-19.

"We tested the cat [Nadia] out of an abundance of caution and will ensure any knowledge we gain about Covid-19 will contribute to the world's continuing understanding of this novel coronavirus," the zoo said in a statement.

Nadia, her sister Azul, as well as two Amur tigers and three African lions who showed symptoms, are all expected to make a full recovery, the zoo said.

The big cats did have some decrease in appetite but "are otherwise doing well under veterinary care and are bright, alert, and interactive with their keepers", it said.

The zoo said it is not known how the virus will develop in animals like tigers and lions since various species can react differently to new infections, but all the animals will be closely monitored.

None of the zoo's other big cats are showing any signs of illness. All the tigers showing symptoms were housed in the zoo's Tiger Mountain area. It is unclear if the others will be tested.

All four zoos run by the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, including the Bronx Zoo, have been closed to the public since 16 March. New measures will now be put in place to protect the animals and their caretakers at all the facilities.

What do we know about animals and the virus?

This coronavirus was first detected in humans in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

The coronavirus (called Sars-CoV-2, which causes the disease Covid-19) is thought to have originated in wildlife and been passed to humans via a live animal market in Wuhan.

The pandemic has been driven by human-to-human transmission, but the infection of Nadia raises new questions about human-to-animal transmission.

There have been less than a handful of isolated reports of companion animals testing positive for coronavirus, including two dogs in Hong Kong.

There is "no evidence that any person has been infected with Covid-19 in the US by animals, including by pet dogs or cats," the zoo's statement noted.

The new virus is part of the coronavirus family, which includes the common cold, Sars and Mers. Getty Images

That is also the view of the World Organisation for Animal Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), which says there is no evidence that pet dogs or cats can pass on the coronavirus.

The World Organisation for Animal Health says studies are under way to understand the issue more. and urges anyone who has become sick to limit contact with pets.

Dr Sarah Caddy, Veterinarian and Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, is among experts to respond to the reports.

"It is surprising that the tiger has become infected with what must have been a fairly low dose of virus - we can assume the tiger did not have continual close contact with the asymptomatic zoo keeper," she said about the transmission.

"It is also interesting that the tiger showed clinical signs consistent with Covid-19 in humans. Although scientific proof is lacking, the chance this is just a coincidence is low."

Conservation experts have warned that the virus could pose a threat to some wildlife like the great apes - and have said measures are needed to reduce the risk of wild gorillas, chimps and orangutans.

(Source: BBC)

No, the coronavirus wasn’t made in a lab. A genetic analysis shows it’s from nature

Scientists took conspiracy theories about SARS-CoV-2’s origins seriously, and debunked them

The coronavirus pandemic circling the globe is caused by a natural virus, not one made in a lab, a new study says.

The virus’s genetic makeup reveals that SARS-CoV-2 isn’t a mishmash of known viruses, as might be expected if it were human-made. And it has unusual features that have only recently been identified in scaly anteaters called pangolins, evidence that the virus came from nature, Kristian Andersen and his colleagues report March 17 in Nature Medicine.

When Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., first heard about the coronavirus causing an outbreak in China, he wondered where the virus came from. Initially, researchers thought the virus was being spread by repeated infections jumping from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China, into humans and then being passed person to person. Analysis from other researchers has since suggested that the virus probably jumped only once from an animal into a person and has been spread human to human since about mid-November (SN: 3/4/20).

But shortly after the virus’s genetic makeup was revealed in early January, rumors began bubbling up that maybe the virus was engineered in a lab and either intentionally or accidentally released.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus (seen in this transmission electron microscope image of virus isolated from a U.S. patient), which causes COVID-19, was rumored to be human-made, but scientists have now debunked that theory. NIAID-RML

An unfortunate coincidence fueled conspiracy theorists, says Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University in New Orleans. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is “in very close proximity to” the seafood market, and has conducted research on viruses, including coronaviruses, found in bats that have potential to cause disease in people. “That led people to think that, oh, it escaped and went down the sewers, or somebody walked out of their lab and went over to the market or something,” Garry says.

Accidental releases of viruses, including SARS, have happened from other labs in the past. So “this is not something you can just dismiss out of hand,” Andersen says. “That would be foolish.”

Looking for clues

Andersen assembled a team of evolutionary biologists and virologists, including Garry, from several countries to analyze the virus for clues that it could have been human-made, or grown in and accidentally released from a lab.

“We said, ‘Let’s take this theory — of which there are multiple different versions — that the virus has a non-natural origin … as a serious potential hypothesis,’ ” Andersen says.

Meeting via Slack and other virtual portals, the researchers analyzed the virus’s genetic makeup, or RNA sequence, for clues about its origin.

It was clear “almost overnight” that the virus wasn’t human-made, Andersen says. Anyone hoping to create a virus would need to work with already known viruses and engineer them to have desired properties.

But the SARS-CoV-2 virus has components that differ from those of previously known viruses, so they had to come from an unknown virus or viruses in nature. “Genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone,” Andersen and colleagues write in the study.

“This is not a virus somebody would have conceived of and cobbled together. It has too many distinct features, some of which are counterintuitive,” Garry says. “You wouldn’t do this if you were trying to make a more deadly virus.”

Other scientists agree. “We see absolutely no evidence that the virus has been engineered or purposely released,” says Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland. She was not part of Andersen’s group, but is a member of a team of scientists with Nextstrain.org that is tracking small genetic changes in the coronavirus to learn more about how it is spreading around the world.

That finding debunks a widely disputed analysis, posted at bioRxiv.org before peer review, that claimed to find bits of HIV in the coronavirus, Hodcroft says. Other scientists quickly pointed out flaws in the study and the authors retracted the report, but not before it fueled the notion that the virus was engineered.

Some stretches of the virus’s genetic material are similar to HIV, but that’s something that stems from those viruses sharing a common ancestor during evolution, Hodcroft says. “Essentially their claim was the same as me taking a copy of the Odyssey and saying, ‘Oh, this has the word the in it,’ and then opening another book, seeing the word the in it and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s the same word, there must be parts of the Odyssey in this other book,” she says. “It was a really misleading claim and really bad science.”

Finding peculiar features

Andersen’s group next set out to determine whether the virus could have been accidentally released from a lab. That’s a real possibility because researchers in many places are working with coronaviruses that have potential to infect humans, he says. “Stuff comes out of the lab sometimes, almost always accidentally,” he says.

A couple of unexpected features of the virus caught the researchers’ eyes, Andersen says. In particular, the gene encoding the coronavirus’s spike protein has 12 extra RNA building blocks, or nucleotides, stuck in it.

This spike protein protrudes from the virus’ surface and allows the virus to latch onto and enter human cells. That insertion of RNA building blocks adds four amino acids to the spike protein, and creates a site in the protein for an enzyme called furin to cut. Furin is made in human cells, and cleaves proteins only at spots where a particular combination of amino acids is found, like the one created by the insertion. SARS and other SARS-like viruses don’t have those cutting sites.

Finding the furin cutting site was a surprise: “That was an aha moment and an uh-oh moment,” Garry says. When bird influenza viruses acquire the ability to be cut by furin, the viruses often become more easily transmissible. The insertion also created places where sugar molecules could be fastened to the spike protein, creating a shield to protect the virus from the immune system.

The COVID-19 virus’ spike protein also binds more tightly to a protein on human cells called ACE2 than SARS does (SN: 3/10/20). Tighter binding may allow SARS-CoV-2 to more easily infect cells. Together, those features may account for why COVID-19 is so contagious (SN: 3/13/20).

“It’s very peculiar, these two features,” Andersen says. “How do we explain how this came about?  I’ve got to be honest. I was skeptical [that it was natural]. This could have happened in tissue culture” in a lab, where viruses may acquire mutations as they replicate many times in lab dishes. In nature, viruses carrying some of those mutations might be weeded out by natural selection but might persist in lab dishes where even feeble viruses don’t have to fight hard for survival.

Clinching the case for nature

But then the researchers compared SARS-CoV-2 with other coronaviruses recently found in nature, including in bats and pangolins. “It looks like SARS-CoV-2 could be a mix of bat and pangolin viruses,” Garry says.

Viruses, especially RNA viruses such as coronaviruses, often swap genes in nature. Finding genes related to the pangolin viruses was especially reassuring because those viruses’ genetic makeup wasn’t known until after SARS-CoV-2’s discovery, making it unlikely anyone was working with them in a lab, he says.

Coronaviruses that infect pangolins gave researchers important clues that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is natural. 2630BEN/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS

In particular, pangolins also have the amino acids that cause the tight binding of the spike protein to ACE2, the team found. “So clearly, this is something that can happen in nature,” Andersen says. “I thought that was very important little clue. It shows there’s no mystery about its tighter binding to the human [protein] because pangolins do it, too.”

The sugar-attachment sites were another clue that the virus is natural, Andersen says. The sugars create a “mucin shield” that protects the virus from an immune system attack. But lab tissue culture dishes don’t have immune systems, making it unlikely that such an adaptation would arise from growing the virus in a lab. “That sort of explained away the tissue-culture hypothesis,” he says.

Similarity of SARS-CoV-2 to bat and pangolin viruses is some of the best evidence that the virus is natural, Hodcroft says. “This was just another animal spillover into humans,” she says. “It’s really the most simple explanation for what we see.” Researchers still aren’t sure exactly which animal was the source.

Andersen says the analysis probably won’t lay conspiracy theories to rest. Still, he thinks the analysis was worth doing. “I was myself skeptical at the beginning and I kept flipping back and forth,” Andersen says, but he’s now convinced. “All the data show it’s natural.”

(Source: Science News)

Cheetah sees photographer napping under a tree, decides to join in

We are all fascinated by photos of wildlife, and every single chance we get to peek into their kingdom is more than welcome.

Being free to roam the incredible landscapes makes these spectacular animals even more exhilarating. They are spontaneous, struggling, and sentient. Wildlife is often the symbol of cleverness, agility, strength, beauty, and grace.

Can a photographer ask for more?

Dolph Volker works as a volunteer at the Cheetah Experience in South Africa. The non-profit is the home of endangered and threatened species, including cheetahs, leopards, male non-breeding lions, servals, caracals, African wildcats, wolves, meerkats, and a Siberian tiger.

After his beloved dog died in his arms, this wildlife photographer and zoologist was overwhelmed with feelings of deep sorrow. The event completely changed his life, and he decided to do his best to fight for animal rights and raise awareness for endangered species.

He would often use up his vacation days and savings to volunteer at the Cheetah Experience.

Cheetahs can be very shy, so he works for months to gain their confidence. However, his dedicated work eventually paid off.

Being tired after a long day in the sun, Dolph decided to take a nap under a tree. Then, a cheetah named Eden saw him, walked up to him,  sniffed him, and decided to cuddle with him!

When Dolph opened his eyes, he was speechless!

Yet, this was just the beginning of one great friendship, and Eden sees Dolph as belonging to her species. She cuddles him, nibbles him, purrs and snuggles with him.

Dolph now spends most of his time in the company of cheetahs, and is even known as “The Cheetah Whisperer.”

Make sure you check out the video below to learn more about this adorable friendship. You will be fascinated by the special bond the two have developed:

(Source: Healthy Food House)

Yikes! Fox and rodent battle is top wildlife photo

It looks like it ought to be the subject of a funny caption competition but this picture taken in China's Qilian Mountains is deadly serious.

The fox has surprised the marmot and a fight is about to begin that will result in the rodent being killed.

Not even the intervention of the marmot's mother can change the outcome.

"That's nature," says Yongqing Bao, whose striking image has earned him the top prize in the 2019 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

The shot also meant Yongqing got to share the award for the best picture in the mammal behaviour category.

Persistence pays when you are a wildlife photographer, and Yongqing had to stake out an alpine meadow on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for several hours to be in position to catch the action.

The fox had lain very still, hoping to trap a passing marmot unawares. It worked a treat. In one of the more gruesome frames on Yongqing's camera, the fox has the young rodent's head in its mouth.

Roz Kidman Cox was the chair of judges. "The WPY competition has behaviour entries like no other. The world's top photographers in the field of animal behaviour always enter, and I have to say this image is one of the best I've ever seen," she told BBC News.

This year's junior grand prize winner is Cruz Erdmann for his night-time image of a bigfin reef squid in the Lembeh Strait off North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Cruz had entered in the 11-14 years category.

Getting a clear shot of the iridescent cephalopod takes a good deal of technical prowess. "You have to be careful not to stir up the silt when you dive or you'll get a lot of backscatter from the strobe light. I wasn't kicking with my legs so that's why the photo seems very clear," he said.

WPY, as it's often called, is one of the most prestigious competitions of its type in world photography.

Started in 1964, the competition is now organised by London's Natural History Museum.

An exhibition of the best images opens at the South Kensington institution on Friday. Next year's competition starts taking entries from Monday.

Scroll down for some of the other category winners.

Land of the eagle by Audun Rikardsen, Norway

Winner 2019, Behaviour: Birds. 

This shot took Audun three years to achieve. He'd carefully placed an old tree branch in a position where the golden eagles would come into land. A camera and flash would trigger as soon as a bird set down.

Audun recalled: "They became so used to the flash going off, it didn't seem to bother them. I think they like having their picture taken." Crows would do it as well, but that wasn't quite the picture the Norwegian photographer was after.

The huddle by Stefan Christmann, Germany

Winner 2019, Wildlife Photographer of the Year Portfolio Award.

The toughest of the tough. More than 5,000 emperor penguins gather together in their classic huddle formation to beat the wind and late winter cold on the sea-ice in front of the Ekström Ice Shelf in East Antarctica. These are male birds incubating eggs at their feet. The females have gone to sea to forage.

The rat pack by Charlie Hamilton James, UK

Winner 2019, Urban Wildlife. Charlie was on an assignment for National Geographic, to photograph the rats of the world. This group he found in the Wall Street district of Manhattan, New York.

The rodents were living under a grill that surrounded the base of a tree. At night they'd run over to the rubbish bins outside a hotel to feed. Charlie set up his camera and fired the shutter with a remote trigger from a couple of metres away.

"There were probably 30 rats living under the grate. They became so used to me over three days that one of them came and stood on my foot," Charlie said.

The architectural army by Daniel Kronauer, USA

Winner 2019, Behaviour: Invertebrates. These army ants in Costa Rica don't build a nest in the earth or in an old tree. Instead, they construct it out of their own bodies, hanging from branches in interlocking chains. Inside, are passageways and chambers where they protect their queen and nurture their young.

"Pretty much every day they disassemble this structure; it just melts away and they carry the larvae across the rainforest, setting up a new bivouac maybe 150m away," Daniel said. "It's beautiful. I thought this nest looked like a crown or a cathedral."

Snow exposure by Max Waugh, USA

Winner 2019, Black and White. No WPY is complete without a good "whiteout" image. This one of a bison was captured in Yellowstone National Park. The bison wants to get at the buried grasses and sedges and so makes a hole by brushing its face from side to side.

"I'd been in situations like this before where I'd played around with slower shutter speeds," said Max. "I think that's part of what makes this a good picture - the snow is blurred. I just waited until the bison lifted its head and fired off a few shots.”

Snow-plateau nomads by Shangzhen Fan, China

Winner 2019, Animals in Their Environment.

A small herd of male chiru are seen crossing a snow-covered slope in the Kumukuli Desert of China's Altun Shan National Nature Reserve. These  antelope live at altitudes up 5,500m where temperatures can fall to -40C. "They like to get to the patches of bare sand because that's where it is warmest," says Shangzhen. The photographer took this image from a kilometre away. In the same sequence, he saw two bears moving across a ridge.

(Source: BBC)