The image of this marmot terrified by a fox is the animal photo of the year

There are surprising encounters at the end of hibernation. In the early days of spring, the marmots of the Qilian Mountains in China, still plump with their winter coat, begin to venture out of their burrows. One of them found herself face to face with a vixen, rather patient at first: the groundhog has time to give warning so that his fellows get into the ground and escape.

An hour later, she comes out to look for plants. It was then that the fox, still in place and with three feeding foxes, seized the opportunity and jumped on her unlucky prey. The photograph was immortalized by Chinese photographer Yongqing Bao, winner of the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year award for 54 years – and now run by the Natural History Museum of China. London.

"Death and life, in all their intensity, were engraved on their faces – the predator in action, his long exposed canines, and the terrified prey, the forepaw, with long claws more adapted to dig than to to defend, "describes the BBC – founder of the award in 1965. The work is soberly titled The Moment.

Poker game for the cougar

If Yongqing Bao is the big winner of the competition as a whole, her photo is also a winner in the "Mammals" category. He shares the first step of the podium with Ingo Arndt, a German photographer author ofEqual to equals (The equal match).

On this shot, a cougar closes his claws on the neck of a guanaco, a camelid parent of the llama. The neck oscillates with the movement and violence of the attack. The mouthful of grass, not yet swallowed by the guanaco, flies in the air. The scene, taken in the park of Torres del Paine in Chile, required a great preparation.

The photographer has been watching for a long time, explains the BBC. The cougar, his main object of study, was accustomed to his presence. He instead spotted potential prey and waited for the arrival of the predator that he could follow through binoculars and radio. The guanaco immortalized on his shot eventually ran out and moved his weight on the female cougar, reports Ingo Arndt. The rest of his work is visible on his site.

Young talent

The Animal Photographer of the Year Award also recognizes young talent. 14-year-old Cruz Erdmann was rewarded for a snorkel shot of night reef Night glow (Night Glow) in the Lembeh Strait in Indonesia.

"To dive into total darkness, to find this magnificent squid and to be able to photograph it in such an elegant way, in order to reveal its forms and its colors, requires a lot of talent", noted Theo Bosboom, himself an animal photographer and jury member of this 55th competition.

A French rising star

Beyond the big winners, a Frenchman, Jeremie Villet, distinguished himself in a category, under the mention "Rising Star". "Demonstrating artistic style and intent, these works show the extent of the artist's talent and vision, while illustrating consistent quality," reads the description of the category. Jeremie Villet interfered in the polar cold during six wintering to photograph mouflons, gyrfalcons, puffins and ermines.

His picture of two sheep pushing each other in the Canadian Yukon nearly cost him members tells the BBC: determined to take his shot, lying in the snow, he did not immediately realize his feet were freezing, which can cause serious injury. The rest of his work is visible on Instagram.

As a whole, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, which receives some 48,000 entries from 100 different countries, distinguishes unique moments captured with talent. The French editions Biotope publish this Wednesday all the winning shots in the book Wildlife Photographer of the year 2019.