Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017 winners

Contemplation © Peter Delaney/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Contemplation by Peter Delaney. Winner 2017, Animal Portraits.

Crab surprise © Justin Gilligan/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Peter had spent a long, difficult morning tracking the chimpanzees – part of a troop of some 250 – through Uganda’s Kibale National Park. Totti was busy with vigorous courtship, pacing and gesticulating. It was only when he finally flopped down, worn out with unrequited love, that Peter had his chance. “He lay back, hands behind his head, and rested for a moment, as if dreaming of what could have been.” © Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Giant gathering © Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Crab surprise by Justin Gilligan. Winner 2017, Behaviour: Invertebrates.

In the grip of the gulls © Ekaterina Bee/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Out of the blue, an aggregation of giant spider crabs the size of a football field wandered past. Justin was documenting a University of Tasmania kelp transplant experiment and was taken by surprise. A Maori octopus seemed equally delighted with the unexpected bounty © Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Memorial to a species © Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Giant gathering by Tony Wu. Winner 2017, Behaviour: Mammals.

Palm-oil survivors © Aaron Gekoski/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Dozens of sperm whales mingled noisily off Sri Lanka’s northeast coast, stacked as far down as Tony could see. This was part of something special – a congregation of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of social units, like a kind of gathering of the clans. Sperm whales are intelligent, long-lived and gregarious, and groups play, forage, interact and communicate in different ways and have distinctive cultures. Aggregations like this could be a critical part of their rich, social lives but are rarely reported. Some two thirds of the sperm whale population was wiped out during the peak of industrialized whaling in the 20th century. This kind of major gathering could be a sign that populations are recovering © Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Polar pas de deux © Eilo Elvinger/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

In the grip of the gulls by Ekaterina Bee. Winner 2017, 10 years and under.

Stuck in © Ashleigh Scully/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Like all her family, five-and-a-half-year-old Ekaterina is fascinated by nature. On a boat trip off the coast of central Norway, her focus was on the cloud of herring gulls. They were after food, and as soon as Ekaterina threw them bread, they surrounded her. She liked the expression of the bird furthest away: 'It looked very curious, as if it was trying to understand what was happening on the boat.'

Tapestry of life © Dorin Bofan/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The ancient ritual © Brian Skerry/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Memorial to a species by Brent Stirton. Grand title winner 2017.

The good life © Daniel Nelson/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Poachers killed this black rhino for its horn with high-caliber bullets at a water hole in South Africa’s Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park. They entered the park illegally, likely from a nearby village, and are thought to have used a silenced hunting rifle. Once the most numerous rhino species, black rhinos are now critically endangered due to poaching and the illegal international trade in rhino horn, one of the world’s most corrupt illegal wildlife networks © Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The ice monster © Laurent Ballesta/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Palm-oil survivors by Aaron Gekoski. Winner 2017, Wildlife Photojournalist: Single image.

The incubator bird © Gerry Pearce/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

In eastern Sabah, on the island of Borneo, three generations of Bornean elephants edge their way across the terraces of an oil-palm plantation being cleared for replanting. In the Malaysian state of Sabah the majority of rainforest has already been logged (only 8 per cent of protected intact forest remains), the palm-oil industry is still a major driver of deforestation, squeezing elephants into smaller and smaller pockets of forest. Increasingly they wander into oil-palm plantations to feed, where they come into conflict with humans, with elephants being shot or poisoned © Wildlife Photographer of the Year