Images of jumping lemurs and octopus moms promote conservation efforts

The best photos of scientists at work in 2025

The winners of Nature's 2025 photo competition capture the essence of scientific fieldwork in diverse and challenging environments. From a biologist battling waves for whale research to ice core drilling in polar night conditions, this gallery details the research being each winning photo.

Explore the 2025 Ocean Photographer of the Year winners and finalists

The Ocean Photographer of the Year celebrates and advocates for the ocean and its creatures. From tiny 3mm amphipods to hunting orcas, see a collection of images highlighting the beauty of our blue planet.

See the winning photos from a major European nature photography contest

Selected from nearly 9,000 submissions by 546 photographers across 15 countries, the honored images range from clashing Alpine ibexes to a wolf feeding on flower nectar, captured by the grand prize winner, 20-year-old Luca Lorenz.

See a gallery of winning photos from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards for 2025

The overall winner was “Ghost Town Visitor," which depicts an extremely rare brown hyena visiting an abandoned mining building in Kolmanskop, Namibia, by South African photographer Wim van den Heever. Other amazing shots include "Orphan of the Road," showing a longhorn beetle observing large machinery, and "Survival Purse," featuring the egg case of a swell shark.

See hilarious photos from the Comedy Wildlife Awards 2025

Napping frog princes, annoying lion husbands, and kung fu sea eagles are just some of the charming shots you'll find among the finalists for the award.

National Geographic's 2022 Photo of the Year

See all 10 of the top photographs and find out how perseverance—and a ton of patience—got Karthik Subramaniam the grand-prize-winning shot.

See February 2026's best science images, including raining iguanas.

Watch insects and animal pollinators in slow motion

Louie Schwartzberg's "Moving Art" series showcases slow-motion footage of oceans, forests, deserts, flowers, and more. In this excerpt, organisms such as bats, monarch butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds are shown interacting with one another and with flowering plants.

View a media gallery of coral reefs from around the world

Developed by The Ocean Agency, the Ocean Image Bank launched in 2021 with the help of more than 200 ocean photographers, videographers, and science organizations to help engage the public and inspire support for oceans as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science.

Ten magnificent photos of lions

A new book of essays and images reveals the history of the big cats, elaborating on how they’ve become a vulnerable species today (and efforts to preserve them).

The beauty of the Earth in 80 photos

The world is full of beautiful landscapes, creatures, and scenes. Here's a gallery of 80 incredible photos with explanatory captions to deepen your appreciation for the diverse wonders of Earth.

View the fluorescently stained internal structures of a tardigrade

The photograph won the Olympus Global Life Science Light Microscopy Americas regional award in 2019. Using chemicals from biofluorescent organisms, the image illuminates internal structures with multiple hues in an otherwise mostly colorless organism.

Explore a gallery of astronomical images curated by the European Space Agency

The collection includes illustrations and images of aurorae, planets, stars, galaxies, stellar nurseries, star clusters, exoplanets, quasars and black holes. Mission photography of astronauts, shuttles and telescopes is also featured.

Ansel Adams' photographs captured the majesty of a growing National Park System

The famed American photographer was an ardent conservationist and believed deeply in the promise of the national parks. His photos sought to capture the feeling of seeing the parks' mountains, lakes, and vistas firsthand. Below is one example, taken at Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

A collection of the world's best live animal cams

What are the animals up to? If you're too busy to get to the zoo today, you can take a quick glance at this site, which aggregates dozens of live feeds of animals from around the world. See elephants, bald eagles, and puppies all in one place—but...

Divers capture a blanket octopus unveiling her billowing membrane

In a short clip captured during a blackwater night dive in the Lembeh Strait, a blanket octopus unfolds and displays a colorful web multiple times its original size. The aquatic animal’s iridescent body and tentacles glow against the nighttime...

See a collection of LIFE's most iconic photos in history

Famous images, like a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square to celebrate the end of World War II, are each shared with context in this article. See some of history's most famous moments from a unique point of view, including photos of Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and Muhammad Ali.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

David Attenborough received the 2021 Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award

The UN's highest environmental honor celebrated Attenborough as "one of the leading voices of the global environmental movement." For at least four decades, he collaborated with the UN Environment Programme by advocating for "efforts to counter the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and pollution" and addressing "world leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference" in 2021.

Biosphere 2 is the largest Earth science experiment ever built

The vivarium—an enclosed system including animals and plants—is sealed from below with 454 metric tons of stainless steel liner and includes an ocean habitat with more than 700,000 gallons of seawater. B2 is visited by 100,000 people yearly, including more than 10,000 K-12 students.

California is one of the world’s 35 biodiversity hotspots

The state comprises the hotspot known as the California Floristic Province, where roughly 3,000 species of vascular plants grow—roughly three-fifths of which are found nowhere else in the world (also known as endemic).

The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill galvanized the modern environmental movement

In January 1969, an oil platform off the coast of Santa Barbara ruptured, releasing roughly 3 million gallons of crude into the Pacific. The spill killed over 10,000 seabirds, dolphins, and seals, coating 35 miles of coastline.

Side-by-side shots of once-dry California lakes now filled

In late 2022, much of California was in drought; by early 2023, after a series of downpours from atmospheric rivers, much of the state's reservoirs had been re-filled. See the dramatic difference in this series of photos.

Explore over 46,000 pages of Charles Darwin's manuscripts

The American Museum of Natural History hosts almost 35,000 digitized folios related to evolution within the fields of botany and zoology from Darwin's Beagle voyage. High-resolution color images, geological findings, and annotated books from Darwin's personal library are also viewable.

Reporting on the Santa Cruz storms

The Pulitzer on the Road podcast interviews prizewinners for insights on their work and takes a deep dive into issues relevant to the awards. This episode focuses on Lookout Santa Cruz, a digital California-based outlet that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for its coverage of the devastating storms the region faced in early 2023. Lookout’s reporters discuss the importance of local news coverage.

UC Santa Cruz's nontraditional mascot was selected by its students

After becoming an NCAA Division III school, UC Santa Cruz ditched its informal mascot, the banana slug, for a sea lion. Students protested and eventually held a straw vote to reinstate the old name, which they saw as an antidote to the hypercompetitive nature of college athletics.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

Scientists have struggled to pin down Ebola's natural reservoir species for decades, but the available evidence suggests that it's very likely fruit and insect-eating bats found in Africa.

When caught in the mouths of cardinal fish, seed shrimp release glowing, bioluminescent chemicals, which alert predators of the cardinal fish, prompting the shrimp's ejection.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

See images of medical cases of firework injuries shared on this 'Instagram for doctors.' (Warning: Graphic content)

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

Planarian flatworms are small, aquatic worms with exceptional regenerative capabilities. When cut, the worms can regenerate multiple bodies in a matter of weeks.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.