These are our best animal photos of 2019

Wolves pick at the remains of a muskox. To get this image, photographer Ronan Donovan placed a camera trap inside the carcass. The pack returned to feed on and off for a month.

At the Tikki Hywood Foundation’s rescue centre, in Zimbabwe, each pangolin—like Tamuda, seen here—is assigned a caretaker. The pangolins form close bonds with their humans, who help them learn how to feed on ants and termites. Rescued as a baby, Tamuda was stubborn and impish, his caretaker says.

A male elephant grabs an evening snack in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park. Most of the park’s elephants were killed for their ivory, used to buy weapons during the nation’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1992. With poaching controlled, the population is recovering.

Green sea turtles congregate near a dock in the Bahamas. They were so numerous during Christopher Columbus’s day that 'it seemed the ships would run aground on them.' Now, six of the world’s seven sea turtle species are considered vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered.

A spiky mouthful, Alchisme grossa has thornlike barbs that may dissuade would-be predators. This perturbed bug perched on a red leaf after flying away from photographer Javier Aznar González de Rueda. But members of this species are more commonly found on foliage matching their own hue. They may appear unappetising, but there’s no need to tempt fate by sticking out.

A pangolin peeks from a box on the way up a remote mountain in Vietnam, where 25 pangolins rescued from the illegal trade will be released back into the wild. Based in Cuc Phuong National Park, the nonprofit Save Vietnam’s Wildlife helped train the country’s first anti-poaching team and has rescued more than a thousand pangolins.

In the largest relocation of wild lions in history, 24 big cats were sedated and transported from South Africa to Mozambique in August 2018. After years of civil war in Mozambique, lions were all but lost in the Zambezi Delta region. These two dozen lions could grow the population to as many as 500 within 15 years.

This giant salamander, known as a hellbender, hopes to make a northern water snake its next meal. Herasimtschuk says this photograph may be the first of a hellbender attempting to eat a snake.

Zakouma National Park, a region of grasses and acacia in southeastern Chad, lost more than 90 percent of its elephants during the century’s first decade, mostly to mounted bandits (janjaweed) from Sudan. Conservation group African Parks took over management in 2010, and now the elephants feel safe enough to disperse more broadly and produce an abundance of calves.

Clay, Daniel, and Enzo, three of 39 tigers rescued from an animal park in Oklahoma, gather at a pool at the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, Colorado. These cats will live out their lives here, with proper nutrition and vet care.

Thousands of migratory songbirds are caught in Florida each year to supply a thriving illegal market. It can sometimes takes weeks of rehabilitation to strengthen the wings of confiscated songbirds so they can fly again. Here, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Lt. Antonio Dominguez releases rose-breasted grosbeaks back into the wild.

Jellyfish float among the fronds of a kelp forest off Isla de los Estados, Argentina. Giant kelps (Macrocystis pyrifera) are the largest algae in the ocean, growing upward to more than 150 feet. Their forests harbour one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet.

Behind netting, a polar bear dances at the Circus on Ice in Kazan, Russia. Performing polar bears are extremely rare. The show’s four bears wear metal muzzles, and their trainer, Yulia Denisenko, carries a metal rod. Between tricks, the bears lie down and rub themselves on the ice.

As the sun sets in Tierra del Fuego, a beaver munches on a tree branch next to a fallen trunk.

Jessica Burkhart, a University of Minnesota neurology Ph.D. candidate, is in charge of physical therapy for two cubs, Karlos and Ivana, surrendered from Pienika during the April welfare inspection and taken to the Old Chapel Veterinary Clinic, in Pretoria. The cubs could barely walk when they arrived. Burkhart says that when she’s with them, she crawls on all fours so as not to intimidate them.

After 18 hours, Valentina emerged from her coma and slowly started to eat. Here, she enjoys some milk and termites.

An orphaned giraffe nuzzles a caregiver at Sarara Camp in northern Kenya. Samburu cattle herders found the abandoned calf and alerted Sarara—known for raising orphaned mammals and returning them to their habitat. The young giraffe now lives with a wild herd.

Muskoxen are one of the few prey animals that can work together to form a defensive line to protect the herd’s calves and counter wolf attacks.

=A white fox named Rowyn relaxes in the sun in front of the barn at Save a Fox, where founder Mikayla Raines takes in foxes from fur farms and pet owners who got in over their heads.=

Every winter, rough-skinned newts visit the same pond in Oregon’s Willamette River to mate. Eight years and thousands of photographs later, Herasimtschuk finally captured “the perfect newt image.”

This armadillo was rescued from the fire zones around Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and treated in a hotel-turned-animal-hospital in the small community of Aguas Calientes. Hotel owner José Sierra tries to calm the animal ahead of his release back to the wild.

From "Inside the efforts to help animals hurt by the Amazon fires," September 2019.

A predatory katydid (Clonia wahlbergi) rears back in a threatening display.

A male panther jumps over a creek in Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. A panther would visit this camera trap site approximately once a month. Because panthers are mostly nocturnal, it took nearly two years of camera trapping to capture this daylight image.

Gluay Hom, a four-year-old elephant trained to perform tricks for tourists, is chained to a pole in a stadium at Samut Prakan Crocodile Farm and Zoo near Bangkok, Thailand. His swollen right foreleg hangs limp. At his temple is a bloody wound from lying on the floor.

Late in the dry season, a remnant pool in the Mussicadzi River channel attracts a mob of hungry birds, including storks, egrets, and hammerkops, along with a couple of thirsty waterbuck. Gorongosa’s avian richness swells further in the wet season, when nomads arrive to feed.

Kenyan wildlife experts approach a reticulated giraffe that has been tranquilized in the Loisaba Wildlife Conservancy. They’ll attach a GPS unit to one of its ossicones—the bony knobs on its head—so scientists can follow it, part of a plan to track 250 giraffes in key parts of Africa to better understand how much space giraffes need.

Once or twice a month during Costa Rica’s rainy season, female olive ridley sea turtles come ashore by the tens of thousands and lay eggs in a mass nesting event known as an arribada. Hatchlings begin emerging about 45 days later.