THE BEST WILDLIFE PHOTOS OF THE YEAR The Natural History Museum in London holds a yearly contest for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, with over 10 categories. This year's contest had 49,000 entries from around the world. This year's grand prize winner was Sergey Gorshkov's picture of a Siberian tiger. Siberian tigers are endangered; only about 500 of them live in Russia's far east. It took Mr. Gorshkov ten months to get a shot of one of them. It looks like the tiger is hugging the tree, but it's actually trying to leave its smell as a way of communicating with other tigers. Another endangered animal, a glass frog, was a category prize winner. Jaime Culebras said he had walked for four hours in the Andes mountains in the middle of a rainstorm, before he captured the picture of the frog snacking on a spider. Mogens Trolle won the Animal Portraits prize with his picture of a young proboscis monkey, which is sitting calmly, enjoying the sunlight with its eyes closed. Proboscis monkeys look strange because the male's nose can eventually grow so big that it hangs over its mouth and may have to be pushed aside to eat. They're endangered and only found on Borneo and the islands nearby. There is a separate contest for people under 18, known as the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year. In this contest, pictures are judged in three separate age groups. In the 10 and under category, Andrés Luis Dominguez Blanco of Spain won with his picture of a bird called a "stonechat" sitting on a bending plant. He asked his father to drive him to the field, in order to use the car as a hiding place for taking photographs. Andrés managed to take the picture without scaring the bird. Another young winner, Liina Heikkinen had spent a day watching two adult foxes bring food to their cubs. After one parent brought home a goose, the cubs fought over it. Liina took a picture of a young fox eating the goose, while hiding away from his siblings.
