Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards Reveal Humorous Animal Moments

The finalists for this year's Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards have been revealed, featuring a diverse array of animals captured in humorous and unexpected moments. The competition, co-founded in 2015 by professional photographers Paul Joynson-Hicks MBE and Tom Sullam, saw a record number of over 10,000 entries from 112 countries.

Photographs span the globe, with finalists hailing from countries including Belgium, India, Peru, Singapore, and the United States, alongside several entries from the UK.

Despite the lighthearted nature of the competition, the awards were established with a core mission to promote wildlife conservation efforts. This year, the competition is supporting the Born Free Foundation, an international charity focused on rescuing and protecting wild animals from exploitation and preserving threatened species and their habitats.

"The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards started very gently, somewhere out on the vast plains of the Serengeti," said Tom Sullam. "What began as a small effort to raise awareness of wildlife conservation has grown into something far bigger than we ever imagined. The competition is now truly global, and a decade or so on, we want to make it even bigger, funnier, and more far-reaching than ever. We use humour to get people to feel empathy towards wildlife, and it's that empathy that creates behavioural change for the better."

Among the finalist images are:

• "Morning calisthenics" by Scott Suriano (USA), showing a brown bear in Alaska appearing to perform morning exercises.

• "Spicy Orangutan" by Tanner Mansell (USA), capturing an orangutan in Borneo that appears displeased by being photographed.

• "Exhausted Badger cub" by Lukas Andree Andersen (Sweden), featuring a young badger resting in a forest.

• "Resting Owl Face" by Ka Chum Jacky Sung (Hong Kong), depicting a mountain scops-owl with a stern expression.

• "Oops, I think I just parped" by Carolyn Moore (UK), a brown hare in Wiltshire appearing embarrassed.

• "Cheeky little elephant" by Hannah Dietl (Germany), a baby elephant peeking from grass in South Africa.

• "Nature's Window" by Lee Frost (UK), showing a damselfly peering through a hole in a leaf.

• "A Very Pressured Spadefish" by Kyo Chen (Taiwan), depicting a whale shark looming over a spadefish.

• "The leap he'll never forget" by David Lee (Singapore), a macaque appearing to have an unfortunate accident.

• "Fish-headed bird" by Eigil B Jensen (Norway), an anhinga with prey in its mouth.

Other notable entries include a giraffe appearing to wear a tree as a hat, beavers posing for a camera, a squirrel with grass in its mouth, and a sunbird cooling off in a banana blossom.