Stunningly intimate octopus image wins aquatic photography prize

This extraterrestrial and extraordinarily intimate image offers a rare overview of a Caribbean reef octopus (Octopus Briareus) Mother and her potential offspring in the Blue Heron Bridge diving area, off West Palm Beach in Florida.

After mating, these solitary animals hide far to continue to keep their eggs growing. But for Octopus Briareus And many other species of octopus, history has an unpleasant end.

After a mother octopus lays a pocket of a few hundred eggs, she stops eating; She will die shortly after the eggs’ hatch. In 2022, research highlighted the process. The lifespan and reproduction of invertebrates are controlled by optical glands, the main neuroendocrine center of the octopus, which is roughly the equivalent of the pituitary gland in vertebrates.

The optical gland of octopus mothers undergoes a massive increase in cholesterol production after mating, which can trigger a self -destructive spiral. But the reason for this cycle is not yet clear. A theory is that it prevents octopus from eating its own young people.

Mother Poulpe won the independent nature photographer Kat Zhou the category of aquatic life in the photography competition of the natural world of Bigpicture 2025, open to all photographers, professionals and amateurs. The competition aims to celebrate and illustrate the diversity of life on earth and cause action to protect and preserve it.

The Grand Prix Global went to the photographer and conservationist Zhou Donglin The difficult life of LemurA terribly brilliant image taken in Tsingy of Bemaraha Strict Nature Reserve, Madagascar (illustrated below). After a day of hard slog in an accidental and delicate terrain, Donglin captured a common brown lemur (EULEMUR FULVUS) in a leap defying the death from one cliff to another – with her baby on board.

The following image, Mud skipping By Georgina Steytler (illustrated below), is a strange reminder of the distant past of life, while a strange amphibian jumps out of the mud. Finalist in the section of the aquatic life of the competition, Steytler spent days on Goode Beach, in Broome, Western Australia, before capturing the exact moment when a blue spot mudskipper (Boleophthalmus pectiniStris) went into the air.

The final image (illustrated below) seems to have been turned on a distant planet. Actually, Snow embaits By plant photographer Ellen Woods – finalist in the Landcapes, Waterscapes and Flora of the Prize category – was filmed near Woods’ home in Connecticut, in the northeast of the United States.

He shows a moufette cabbage (Symplocarpus fetidus), which is often one of the first plants to emerge while winter ends because of its ability to create its own microclimate, warming around 23 degrees Celsius even when the surrounding air is below freezing.

This is due to thermogenesis or the ability to metabolically generate heat. This not only protects the plant tissues against frost damage, but it also serves to attract pollinators of beetle and fly in search of a hot carrion meal.

Less attractive is the origin of its name: it emits a mipper when its leaves are bruised.

Winning entries will be exhibited at California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco later this year.