21 Award Winning Animal Photos

From dazzling humpback whales to an up close shot of an adorable seahorse, here are 21 Award Winning Animal Photos.

8 - Arctic Underwater Dance
That humpback whale stars center stage in this beautiful imagery, Audun Rikardsen took home the overall winner of the Fritz Polking Prize for GDT's nature photographer of the year in 2016. The playful humpback was swimming on the coast of Norway just before it began its migration into the southern based latitudes.

7 - Goosander Family
This adorable mother goose with her ducklings in tow shot from above is gorgeous as well as heart warming. This stunning work of color, natural light and of course starring mother nature's natural beauty won the German photographer of the year award in the GDT nature photography contest in 2016.

6 - Land of Nothingness
This photograph of a white rhino won Maroesjka Lavigne the professional landscape category award for the sony world photography awards in 2016. Namibia is one of the least densely populated places on the whole planet, a barren yet constantly changing desert landscape.

5 - Sheep Stampede
This snapshot from mother nature won the Award of Excellence in the international pictures of the year competition for science and natural history. From photographer David Guttenfelder and his work with the Associated Press, this photograph showcases a large flock of sheep blocking a once landslide covered roadside deep inside the mountains of the Kashmir region located in Pakistan. This image hails from 2006 and shows the woolly animals fleeing in terror after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake which decimated the area.

4 - Proud Momma
This stunning photograph by Michael O'Neill took home second place in National Geographic's Nature Photographer of the Year in 2016. Fry of a peacock bass tends to hover around their mothers for protection from unsavoury predators. Peacock bass are known for exercising excellent parental care and will protect their young with their very lives against any threat which dares to come between them and their offspring. This tropical species hails from South America and was intentionally introduced into Southern Florida during the 1980s in an attempt to control the African tilapia, another highly invasive species of fish.

3 - Intruder
This charming photograph took home the runner-up prize for GDT's European wildlife photographer of the year award in 2015. Wahrmut Sobainsky of Germany took the award winning shot in a green German lake amongst tiny water snails. The American crayfish is an invasive species, it was introduced to central Europe from north America sometime near 1890 and not only drives out the local crayfish species in devastatingly large numbers but also passes on a crayfish plague which it is immune. This image is meant to make people think about further conservation efforts for the dwindling crayfish population.

2 - Orangutans are more like us than you Think
In 2016 this image was the grand prize winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition which has a record setting 50,000 entries from 95 separate countries around the world. Taken by photographer Tim Laman, this snapshot shows a Bornean orangutan climbing a strangler fig which has entwined itself around a tree in Gunung Palung National Park which can be found in Indonesia. This world class artist spent three full days of climbing up and down with a rope and multiple GoPro placements in order to get this award winning picture. Tim hopes to bring attention to the critical endangerment of Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.

1 - 50 Tons of Me
In February of 2015, his extraordinary piece of photography took home the underwater photographer of the year award. Nuno Sa from Portugal is responsible for this beautiful up close look at a seahorse taken in the Algarve, a natural reserve of Ria Formosa. This underwater world is home to the planet's biggest population of the two species of seahorses which can be found inside the Mediterranean and Atlantic oceans. Unfortunately, the local university aligned with project seahorse has discovered that there has been a registered 85 percent decline in wild seahorse populations between 2001 and 2009. Each year 50 tonnes of seahorses are captured to be put in aquariums and chopped up to be used in traditional Asian medications. Captive breeding could possibly relieve some of the pressure, hence the choice of name for this photo which will hopefully make the world take notice.