NHM Wildlife photography of the year- highly commended pictures

The lost floods by Jasper Doest. Lubinda Lubinda, station manager for the Zambezi River Authority, stands in front of his old house (left) and new house (right). Deforestation along the river paired with the warming effects of climate change has resulted in frequent droughts, and his house no longer needed to be so high.

The octopus case by Samuel Sloss. along the volcanic sands of Lembeh Strait, Indonesia, to spot wildlife when he noticed this octopus hiding in a shell.

The snow stag by Joshua Cox. This reindeer was captured in Richmon Park, London.

Sloth dilemma by Suzi Eszterhas. A brown-necked sloth needed to cross the road to get to a clump of trees, but was met by a menacing dog.

Polar frame by Dmitry Kokh. A polar bear in an abandoned house in Kolyuchin, an uninhabited island in the remote Russian Far East.

Treefrog pool party by Brandon Güell. The rare breeding frenzy of gliding treefrogs occurs in only a few remote locations in Central and South America. At dawn, after torrential rain, thousands of female gliding treefrogs arrive at the specific pools to lay their eggs on overhanging palm fronds.

The bonobo and the mongoose by Christian Ziegler. Christian had tracked a group of bonobos through a flooded forest when he spotted this young male bonobo gently holding a mongoose pup. ‘The bonobo held and stroked the little mongoose for more than an hour,’  he said.

Just one day’s catch by Srikanth Mannepuri. A bird’s-eye view of a market to demonstrate the scale of the day’s marlin and sailfish catch at the Bay of Bengal.

The right look by Richard Robinson. A southern right whale shot off the coast of New Zealand.

Wanted! by Britta Jaschinski. A piece of coltan, glowing blue in torchlight, surrounded by mining tools, gorilla bones and porcupine quills, which were seized by customs authorities. Coltan is an important component in mobile phone and laptop batteries that is extracted from riverbeds in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the poorly paid miners often have to hunt wild animals for food.

The disappearing giraffe by Jose Fragozo. A giraffe disappears among the tall pillars of Kenya’s new Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway.