Nature Photography: The best nature photography of 2025

BBC 22 th. December 2025 

By: Isabelle Gerretsen, Martha Henriques, Katherine Latham an Jocelyn Timperley. 

 (Credit: Daniel Sly and OPY)

 Here are the most eye-catching shots of the natural world from 2025.

From the depths of the oceans to deserts, mountains and the remote Amazon, this year's most extraordinary nature photography brings us glimpses of the diversity and awe of the natural world. 

This year we meet acrobatic gorillas, maritime lions and grinning bears.  

Gamma, a desert lioness, guards a Cape fur seal carcass out of view on a beach in Namibia (Credit: Griet Van Malderen) 

Maritime lion 

In this incredibly striking photo, a lionness gazes into the distance on a pebbled beach on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, as tempestuous waves crash in the background. A small group of desert lions have left their hunting grounds and moved to the Atlantic Ocean in search of prey. 

Read more about how Griet Van Malderen captured this dramatic change in behaviour in Isabelle Gerretsen's story.  

 The rare brown hyena has adopted Namibia's abandoned diamond towns as its own (Credit: Wim van den Heever) 

 Ghost town hyena 

It took nature photographer Wim van den Heever 10 years to capture this iconic shot of a brown hyenas talking an abandoned diamond mining town in Namibia. 

The hyenas sometimes use these deserted structures to shelter from the harsh heat of the desert, and have even been known to have their cubs in derelict buildings. 

Read more in Martha Henriques' story. 

Pink river dolphins are endangered due to hunting, entanglement in fishing nets and pollution (Credit: Hussain Aga Khan) 

Amazonian 'great thieves' 

Hussain Aga Khan captured this shot of the elusive Amazonian pink dolphin, known locally in Portuguese as boto. 

This mysterious creature is both feared and revered by indigenous communities living in the Amazon. Read more about why pink dolphins are the Amazon's "great thieves" in this story by Sofia Moutinho.  

Two young polar bears play amidst pink flowers (Credit: Roie Galitz) 

Polar bears in pink 

More commonly associated with the icy white of the Arctic sea ice, wildlife photographer Roie Galitz captured these two young polar bears in a sea of colour as they play in fireweed in Nunavut, Canada, in August 2025. 

A Pallas's cat gazes intro a camera trap almost 5,000m above sea level in the remote Mago Chu valley in India (Credit: WWF India)

 Mountaintop cat 

WWF India captured this image of the elusive Pallas's cat, the first photographic evidence that it lives in the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh. 

The photo was taken at nearly 5,000m (16,404ft) above sea level. 

The wildlife charity's survey, which used over 130 camera traps planted around the remote Mago Chu valley, also documented the highest elevation records in India for a common leopard, clouded leopard, marbled cat and several other species. 

A ladyfish snatches a small fish from right under the beak of a little egret (Credit: Qingrong Yang) 

What a catch! 

A ladyfish snatches its prey from right under a little egret's beak in this remarkable photo. Qinrong Yang captured this feeding frenzy in Yundang Lake, near his home in southeastern China, and was named one of the winners in the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.        

A young male gorilla shows off his acrobatic flair in Rwanda's Virunga Mountains (Credit: Mark Meth Cohn/ Nikon Comedy Wildlife) 

 High-kicking gorilla

 This photo is the winner of the 2025 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Taken in Rwanda's misty Virunga Mountains, a young male gorilla is seen showing off his acrobatic skills: pirouetting, tumbling and high kicking his way through a forest clearing.  

A turtle swims through iron-rich waters off the coast of Japan (Credit: Hitomi Tsuchiya/ OPY) Underwater 'aurora' 

A turtle swims through the ethereal cloud of an "underwater aurora". This image, a finalist in the 2025 Oceanographic Photographer of the Year competition, was captured by Hitomi Tsuchiya off the coast of the Japanese Island of Satsuma-Iojima. Japan sits on the western edge of the 40,000 km-long (24,850 mile-long) Pacific Ring of Fire, which almost entirely encircles the Pacific Ocean and where the majority of the Earth's active volcanoes can be found. The extraordinary ocean colour is caused by iron-rich substances spewed from underwater hydrothermal vents known as "iron mounds".

Rays reshape the ocean floor when they stir up sand from the seabed (Credit: Ysabela Coll/ OPY) Ocean engineer 

Stingrays stir up sand from the ocean floor to escape hungry predators, or to conceal themselves as they stalk their prey. Rays can move thousands of tonnes of sand a year, reshaping ocean floor habitats and carrying nutrients across the seabed. Ysabela Coll captured this image off the coast of Mexico and was awarded third place in the 2025 Ocean Photographer of the Year competition's Fine Art category. 

This dedicated father is "mouth brooding" his young (Credit: Daniel Sly/ OPY) Gobbleguts This male eastern gobbleguts is "mouth brooding". After the female releases a mass of eggs, the male fertilises them and then appears to gobble them up. In reality, he collects the fertilised eggs into his mouth for incubation, a behaviour known as paternal mouth brooding. This dedicated father was photographed by Daniel Sly during a night dive beneath a busy fishing and ferry wharf in Sydney Harbour, Australia. The image was named a finalist of the 2025 Oceanographic Photographer of the Year competition. 

The "mad hatterpillar" shows off its strange headgear (Credit: Georgina Steytler) 

Mad Hatterpillar 

Georgina Steytler captured the unusual headgear of a gum-leaf skeletoniser caterpillar, which she dubbed the "mad hatterpillar". The translucent tower is made up of old head capsules, which the caterpillar keeps every time it sheds its skin. It is thought to help deflect attacks from predators. The photo was one of the winners at this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards.  

An orb weaver spider captured in an orb of light (Credit: Simone Baumeister)

Spider lights

Simone Baumeister captured this surreal image of an orb weaver spider on a pedestrian bridge, in the middle of the town of Ibbenbüren, Germany. The spider is sitting on its web, silhouetted by lights from the cars below. Species of orb weaver spiders can be found all over the world and create the iconic webs which spiral out from a central point. Using its legs as measuring sticks, an orb weaver spider first builds a non-sticky frame then layers a sticky "capture thread" over the top. Now, the spider can stand on its architectural masterpiece and wait for prey to fly into its trap. The photo was named a winner in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition 2025. 

A pitcher plant fluoresces in shades of purple and pink (Credit: Chien Lee)

Glowing pitcher Chien Lee's image of a fluorescing pitcher plant won the Plants and Fungi category at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 competition. While most plants absorb the nutrients they need from the soil, pitcher plants like these are carnivorous. They trap prey unlucky enough to land on their sticky rim, tipping them down into a pool of digestive juices below where they are slowly dissolved. Lee used a UV torch to illuminate the pitcher plant in an eerie purple glow just after sunset.