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Monday, November 5, 2012

Nikon 2012 Small World Photomicrography Competition - November 5, 2012


Nikon recently announced the winners of the 2012 Small World Photomicrography Competition, with this year’s top honors going to Dr. Jennifer Peters and Dr. Michael Taylor of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Their photomicrograph, “The blood-brain barrier in a live zebrafish embryo” is believed to be the first-ever image showing the formation of the blood-brain barrier in a live animal.
Here are a selection of some of favourites from this fascinating competion. 

01_Place_21844_1_Peters
1st Place
Dr. Jennifer L. Peters and Dr. Michael R. Taylor
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Memphis, Tennessee USA
The blood-brain barrier in a live zebrafish embryo
Confocal
20x

02_Place_21101_3_Piorkowski

2nd Place
Walter Piorkowski
South Beloit, Illinois, USA
Live newborn lynx spiderlings
Reflected Light, Fiber Optics, Image Stacking
6x  
09_Place_22047_3_Drange
9th Place
Geir Drange
Asker, Norway
Myrmica sp. (ant) carrying its larva
Reflected Light, Image Stacking
5x
20_Place_21440_1_Hockman
 20th Place
Dorit Hockman   
Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience
University of Cambridge       
Cambridge, United Kingdom   
Embryos of the species Molossus rufus (black mastiff bat)    
Brightfield
HM _Drange_22047_1
Honorable Mention
Geir Drange
Asker, Norway   
Two ants of different genus meeting on a twig   
Reflected Light, Image Stacking
2.5x
HM_ Kihara_21292_1
Honorable Mention
Dr. Terue Kihara
Senckenberg am Meer, German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research (DZMB)   
Wilhelmshaven, Germany   
Pontostratiotes sp., female, dorsal view. A deep-sea copepod collected in the southeastern Atlantic at a depth of 5395m.
Confocal  
HM_Stolz_21856_1

Honorable Mention
Dr. Donna Beer Stolz
Department of Cell Biology
University of Pittsburgh       
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA   
Moth antenna   
Confocal Stack Reconstruction of Autofluorescence   
100x
20908 - Harold Taylor_Entry_20908_spistack

Image of Distinction
Harold    Taylor   
Kensworth, Dunstable, United Kingdom   
House spider   
Image Stacking   
30x
21940 - David Maitland_Entry_21940_Maitland_David_1
Image of Distinction
Dr. David Maitland
www.davidmaitland.com Macro
Feltwell, United Kingdom
Male Culex pipiens (mosquito)   
Reflected (Episcopic) Diffuse Illumination   
10x
21982 - Ian Gardiner_Entry_21982_Holopedium gibberum

Image of Distinction
Ian Gardiner
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Holopedium gibberum (water flea), live specimen   
Darkfield
50x

11/04/2012

The Daily Beast - November 4, 2012

NOV4

AFP PHOTO / TOBIAS HASE 
A dog tries to catch a snowball in Munich, southern Germany on October 28, 2012. In eastern and southern parts of Germany has fallen around 10cm of snow. AFP PHOTO / TOBIAS HASE  

11/03/2012

The Daily Beast - November 3, 2012

NOV3
AFP Photo/INGO WAGNER
A seal takes a sun bath at the beach in Helgoland, northern Germany, on October 27, 2012.

11/02/2012

The Daily Beast - November 2, 2012

NOV2

AFP PHOTO / ARNO BURGI 
A swan swims on the river Elbe in Dresden, eastern Germany, on October 29, 2012. After first snow fall of the season meteorologists forecast raising temperatures up to 9 degrees for eastern Germany in the coming week.

11/01/2012

The Daily Beast - November 1, 2012

NOV1

AP Photo/Michael Sohn
A Californian sea lion swims in his basin, at the zoo in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Oct. 29, 2012.

10/30/2012

The Daily Beast - 13 Spooky Pumpkin Eaters - Oct 31, 2012

Zoos around the world treat their animals to a little Halloween pumpkin treat.  Happy Halloween!
OCT31-1
AFP PHOTO / WALTRAUD GRUBITZSCH
Meerkats at the zoo in Leipzig, eastern Germany, inspect a carved pumpkin filled with flour worms and straw.

OCT31-2
 
AP Photo/Chicago Zoological Society, Jim Schulz
Jimma, a 27-year-old male rhino, enjoys a Halloween pumpkin treat at the Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Ill.

OCT31-3
 REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin
Almaz, a three-year-old male white African lion, plays with a pumpkin inside his enclosureat the Royev Ruchey zoo in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

OCT31-4
 REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin
Aurora, a two-year-old female polar bear, plays with a pumpkin inside her open air cage during the Zoo Halloween Weekend event at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

OCT31-5
AP Photo/Andrew Matthews/PA Wire
Rocky the Raccoon plays with a carved pumpkin at Bristol Zoo, Bristol, England.

OCT31-6
AP Photo/Nick Ut
Glenda, a 7-year-old western lowland gorilla, examines a carved pumpkin at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens.

OCT31-7
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
A Lorikeets parrot pulls treats from a carved pumpkin during an animal enrichment program at the Oklahoma City Zoo in Oklahoma City.

OCT31-9
REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
Raja, a Komodo Dragon, bites a carved pumpkin during a Halloween-themed media event at the London Zoo.  Raja appears as himself in the latest James Bond film "Skyfall."

OCT31-10
REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
Jae Jae, a Sumatran tiger, plays with a carved pumpkin during a Halloween-themed media event at the London Zoo.

OCT31-11
REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
Maggie, a giraffe plays with a carved pumpkin during a Halloween-themed media event at the London Zoo.

OCT31-12
AFP PHOTO / San Diego Zoo / Tammy Spratt
The San Diego Zoo's  6-month-old jaguar, Tikal, enjoyed rolling a jack-olantern around his exhibit.

OCT31-8
AFP PHOTO/Luis ROBAYO
Bantu, a lion cub born in captivity two months ago, leaves his pumpkin behind him at the zoo in Cali, department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia.

OCT31-13
AP Photo/Chicago Zoological Society, Jim Schulz
A meerkat attempts to crawl inside a carved out pumpkin to get at some tasty meal worms at the Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Ill.

The Daily Beast - Caring for a baby Echidna Puggle - Oct 30, 2012

Not many people have seen an Echidna Puggle, and when they do, a smile from ear to ear is guaranteed!  The Taronga Wildlife Hospital has recently become home to a 40 day old Echidna Puggle, found on a path in a caravan park at Anna Bay on the NSW Central Coast, Australia.
Here's your smile, courtesy of The Daily Beast.
Photos: Ben Gibson / Taronga Zoo

OCT30PUGGLE-1
Annabelle a Taronga Vet Nurse and surrogate Mum to ‘Beau’,  has not seen a puggle at such a young age in over 15 years of caring for sick and injured wildlife at the Zoo.

OCT30PUGGLE-2
The rarity of seeing an Echidna at this age is due to the habit of the adult females which stash their young in a burrow from about 50 days old. The puggle remains in the burrow for some months, with the female going out to feed, returning every few days to feed it milk.

OCT30PUGGLE-3
Both Echidna and Platypus feed their young in an unusual way. Instead of having teats like other mammals, they have milk patches which excrete milk for their young to lap up.

OCT30PUGGLE-4
This is why Annabelle has to feed Beau from the palm of her hand, so it can lap milk as it would do in the wild. Once feeding, Beau resembles a mini vacuum cleaner, going back and forth making sure every drop of milk is sucked up – contributing to its ever growing belly. 

OCT30PUGGLE-5
The sex of Beau will not be known for some months as there is no identifiable pouch or features like with marsupials and other mammals. In time, Beau will develop quills like an adult Echidna but for now it’s only rough covering of hair which the nurses have termed a ‘five o clock shadow’.
At 200 grams before feeding and 250 grams afterwards, Beau still has some months of growing and milk drink to do before he is considered independent and can be left alone without Annabelle around.

10/28/2012

The Daily Beast - Wildlife Photographer of the Year Winners - Oct 29, 2012

High-flying majesty and underwater mayhem: The winners of Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year are revealed:

The winners of the internationally acclaimed Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition were announced recently, amid much excitement at a gala awards ceremony at the Natural History Museum in London, England.  The world-renowned exhibition opened on Oct. 18, featuring 100 awe-inspiring images of nature, which will enthral London audiences before being enjoyed by millions on a U.K. and international tour.
Now in its 48th year, the competition attracted more than 48,000 entries from 98 countries, with Canadian Paul Nicklen’s Bubble-jetting emperors, a spectacular image of the chaotic underwater world of emperor penguins at the edge of the Ross Sea, Antarctica, claiming the overall title of Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
 
OCT24-1
 Frozen moment
© Paul Nicklen (Canada) 
Winner / Behaviour: Birds

Frozen moment Paul Nicklen (Canada) Winner Paul was not the only mammal lying patiently in wait on the edge of the Ross Sea, Antarctica, to greet the explosion of emperor penguins. Leopard seals – measuring up to three and a half metres long – were almost certainly lurking at the edge of the ice ready to grab a meal. The penguins were therefore exiting as fast as possible. They can sky-rocket up to two metres high out of the water, landing well clear of the edge. ‘I also kept an eye out for leopard seals myself,’ says Paul. ‘I’d previously had one hit me square in the face when I was five metres from the ice edge, knocking me down and stunning me. Luckily it realised that I wasn’t a penguin and slipped back into the icy water.’ The penguins’ survival is vital to that of their two-month-old chicks, hungrily waiting some 10 kilometres away at the Cape Washington colony. With full bellies, the penguins toboggan to the colony, where they regurgitate the food to their respective single chicks. They then head back to the Ross Sea for another three-week stint at sea.
OCT24-2

Living on thin ice
 © Ole Jørgen Liodden (Norway)
Winner /  Animals in Their Environment

Winner Ole had photographed polar bears more than a hundred times before around the islands of Svalbard, northern Norway, but on this particular summer evening, everything came together to sum up the bear and its ice environment. ‘The landscape, the shape of the ice floe, the shape of the bear and the footprints were just perfect,’ says Ole. Drifting ice is normal for midsummer in the region. But, says Ole, two weeks later, all the ice around Svalbard had melted, much earlier than in previous years. ‘I hope the picture also makes people think about an environment that is disappearing faster than most of us realise and appreciate the scary future most polar bears are facing, with ever-thinner ice or no ice at all.’
OCT24-3
Dawn flight
© Bartek Kosiński (Poland)
Winner / 10 Years old and under / Wildscapes
Bartek Kosiński (Poland) Winner Bartek spent five days with his father at Milicz Fishponds Nature Reserve, western Poland, photographing the common cranes. These impressive birds – adults have a wingspan of more than two metres – spend a few days on the shore of the shallow lake on their way south to Africa for the winter. Bartek spent every morning and evening taking photographs from the lakeshore hide. On the last dawn, a mist descended and gave the scene a wonderfully mysterious atmosphere. ‘After sunrise,’ says Bartek, ‘we could hardly see the birds. I was using manual focus. So I was very lucky to get them as sharp as this.’
OCT24-4
Into the mouth of the caiman
© Luciano Candisani (Brazil)
Winner / Behaviour: Cold-blooded Animals

 Candisani (Brazil) Winner Motionless but alert, a yacare caiman waits, ‘like a small tyrannosaurus’ for fish to come within snapping reach, says Luciano. Caimans are usually seen floating passively on the surface. Under the water, it’s another story. It’s this secret life that has fascinated Luciano ever since he first came face to face with a caiman while snorkelling. Once he’d recovered from the shock, he realised that the reptile was neither aggressive nor fearful – and that he could approach it. Luciano now regularly documents the underwater life of caimans in the shallow, murky waters of Brazil’s Pantanal (the biggest wetland in the world), which contains the largest single crocodilian population on Earth. Caimans can grow to be three metres in length. Most aren’t aggressive, but some individuals can be. ‘The safest way to get close is when they are concentrating on a shoal of fish,’ says Luciano. ‘While I was concentrating on this caiman emerging from the gloom, I had a field biologist with me all the time.’ The result was ‘the picture that’s been in my imagination since my father first showed me a caiman 25 years ago’.
OCT24-5
Dog days
© Kim Wolhuter (South Africa)
Winner / The Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Species
Winner Kim has been filming African wild dogs at Zimbabwe’s Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve for more than four years. He knows one pack intimately. ‘I have travelled with them, on foot, in the pack itself, running with them as they hunt. It’s a privilege, and it’s given me a true insight into their life.’ Kim has also witnessed first hand the many threats that have made African wild dogs endangered, including increased conflict with humans and domestic animals (poachers’ snares, habitat loss, traffic and disease). ‘At times, it’s heart- wrenching,’ he says. ‘My mission is to dispel the myth that they’re a threat and help raise awareness of their plight.’ African wild dogs require huge territories, and so protecting them can protect entire ecosystems. When this picture was taken, the pack had travelled four kilometres to the Sosigi Pan, only to find it totally dried up. ‘The mosaic of mud seemed to epitomise the increasingly fragmented world this puppy is growing up in.’
OCT24-6
Practice run
© Grégoire Bouguereau (France)
Winner / Behaviour: Mammals

 When a female cheetah caught but didn’t kill a Thomson’s gazelle calf and waited for her cubs to join her, Grégoire guessed what was about to happen. He’d spent nearly a decade studying and photographing cheetahs in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, and he knew that the female’s behaviour meant one thing: a hunting lesson was due to begin. The female moved away, leaving the calf lying on the ground near her cubs. At first, the cubs took no notice of it. But when it struggled jerkily to its feet ‘the cubs’ natural predatory instincts were triggered,’ says Grégoire. ‘Each cub’s gaze locked on to the calf as it made a break for freedom.’ The lesson repeated itself several times, with the cubs ignoring the calf when it was on the ground and catching it whenever it tried to escape – ‘an exercise that affords the cubs the chance to practise chases in preparation for the time they’ll have to do so for real.’
OCT24-7
Fluff-up

© John E Marriott (Canada)
Runner-up / Animal Portraits

 
A shapeless lump of puffed-up black: that’s what the figure looked like, squatting in the middle of a snow-covered road in Jasper National Park, Alberta, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. As John drove slowly towards the feathers, he realised it was a raven. ‘I fully expected it to fly off at any moment, but it just sat there, looking as though it had just got out of bed.’ John cruised slowly by and stopped some 30 metres away to photograph the bird. ‘Looking through the images afterwards, I laughed out loud.’ Fluffing up may look like a bad-hair day to a human, but if a male does it to a female raven it signals an invitation to take note or even to party, though a good fluff does also keep out the cold.
OCT24-8
 Bubble-jetting emperors
© Paul Nicklen (Canada)
Winner / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012
This was the image Paul had been so hoping to get: a sunlit mass of emperor penguins charging upwards, leaving in their wake a crisscross of bubble trails. The location was near the emperor colony at the edge of the frozen area of the Ross Sea, Antarctica. It was into the only likely exit hole that he lowered himself. He then had to wait for the return of the penguins, crops full of icefish for their chicks. Paul locked his legs under the lip of the ice so he could remain motionless, breathing through a snorkel so as not to spook the penguins when they arrived. Then it came: a blast of birds from the depths. They were so fast that, with frozen fingers, framing and focus had to be instinctive. ‘It was a fantastic sight’, says Paul, ‘as hundreds launched themselves out of the water and onto the ice above me’ – a moment that I felt incredibly fortunate to witness and one I’ll never forget.
OCT24-9
Warning night light
© Larry Lynch (USA)
Winner / Animal Portraits

Warning night light Larry Lynch (USA) Winner One evening, while walking along the riverbed of the Myakka River State Park in Sarasota, Florida, USA, Larry came across a group of alligators. It was the dry season, and they had been gorging on fish trapped in the pools left behind as the water receded from the river. One big alligator had clearly eaten its fill. ‘It wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry,’ says Larry. ‘So I set my tripod and camera up about seven metres in
front of him and focused on his eyes.’ Just after sunset, Larry set his flash on the lowest setting to give just a tiny bit of light, enough to catch the eyeshine in the alligator’s eyes. Like cats, an alligator has a tapetum lucidum at the back of each eye – a structure that reflects light back into the photoreceptor cells to make the most of low light. The colour of eyeshine differs from species to species. In alligators, it glows red – one good way to locate alligators on a dark night. The greater the distance between its eyes, the longer the reptile, in this case, very long.
OCT24-10
 Lookout for lions
© Charlie Hamilton James (UK)
Specially Commended / Nature in Black and White


Charlie was filming lions around the Gol Kopjes area of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania when he came across these cheetahs. They, too, were watching lions. ‘Once the danger had gone,’ Charlie says, ‘they relaxed into a gloriously symmetrical pose, in the middle of a curved rock, under a symmetry of clouds, crowned by a perfectly positioned small cloud at the top.’ He adds that ‘normally when taking wildlife pictures, everything conspires against the photographer, but with this picture it was the reverse. Everything worked in harmony.’ The cheetahs stayed posed for only a few minutes and afterwards, as though on cue, went straight to sleep. Charlie chose to photograph them with a converted infrared camera, which in bright sunlight makes an azure sky dark and dramatic.

Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year is owned by the Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide.

The Daily Beast - October 28, 2012

OCT28

Dan Istitene/Getty Images

A red deer stag looks for food in a bracken thicket after sunrise in Richmond Park on October 27, 2012 in London, England. Richmond Park is the largest of the capital's Royal Parks and home to 630 red and fallow deer.

10/27/2012

The Daily Beast - October 27, 2012

OCT27

AFP PHOTO FRANK PERRY
Bonhomme, a male leopard, yawns,in the bioparc of Doue-la-Fontaine. The Sri Lanka leopard is the largest feline in the island country that shares its name. Rare in captivity, it is threatened by the destruction of its habitat. Three young panthera live in the Zoo of Doue-La-Fontaine, Ciuttai, Cingha and Lanka are the children of Iris (6 years) and Bonhomme (12 years).

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