A colourful photo of a green iguana strolling through sunflowers (below) by Indonesian photographer @jjnmatt was voted the overall winner of the “World Best Photos Of Animals 2020” competition organised by photo app Agora.
Fifty images from around the world were selected as finalists from 13,888 submissions to the contest, “showing the wide and precious variety of animal life surrounding us,” according to the organisers.
“We challenged international photographers to participate in the #Animals2020 photo contest with their best shots of living creatures around the planet.”
Here's a slection of our 12 favourite images from the finalists.
Iguana
@jjnmatt’s colourful shot of an iguana scrolling through sunflowers gathered the highest number of votes from Agora users through the different voting rounds on the app, awarding him the #Animals2020 contest’s $1,000 top prize. Photograph: @jjnmatt/Agora App
Baby monkey
This cute little monkey melts our hearts away. Photograph: @prabuds/Agora App
Madoda King
Lions can be perfect models too! Photograph: @frenchcliche/Agora App
Family
The province of Surin is well-known for its elephants. Travelling to this province would be incomplete without a visit to the Ban Ta Klang Elephant village. I wanted to show how the elephants have become symbols of beauty, grace and elegance despite their gigantic size. Photograph: @mannylibrodo/Agora App
Devotion
My friend and I were chatting on the forecourt of the church. I noticed this dog lying on his master's grave. Immediately I went home to look for my camera and, with the permission of the church officials, took the picture. Photograph: @saiful0007/Agora App
Mother Bekantan
A mother protects her child. Photograph: @irawansubingar/Agora App
With mom
I took this photo in the morning, when dozens of elephants were being fed by the nursing staff in the national park. Photograph: @sofyanefendi/Agora App
Motherlove
Mama bear to the rescue. Photograph: @olmospatricia/Agora App
Focused
I often go to the local wild park to practice wildlife photography. It is impossible to discover a lynx in the wild in my region. Therefore, I was very happy to have the opportunity to see this majestic and beautiful animal in the mentioned park. I was impressed by the sharp eyes of the lynx. On this day there was snow and it was very cold, the park was almost empty. Although the lynx's enclosure is limited, they are very mysterious creatures and do not show themselves every day. I found a place to sit down in the empty park and waited with my thick down jacket on sitting and lying on the ground. It took me almost 2 hours to spark the lynx attention and he slowly came towards my direction. The moment I took the photo I had the feeling of having direct eye contact with the lynx. That feeling really sent shivers down my spine. Photograph: @leo.wies/Agora App
Reach the winter
It was the end of the autumn season, you can tell how pleased the reindeer was with the snow falling again. Photograph: @dangthao/Agora App
What are you looking at?
I was very happy that this plant finally bloomed to tell if it was a poisonous plant or not, and seeing bees coming and going, I knew it was a flower with a lot of pollen. Photograph: @kyunghwalee/Agora App
Honour fight
Photograph: @jordisark/Agora App