Best animal photos of 2021

By David Beard, Executive Editor, Newsletters

It’s one of our most popular stories each time: National Geographic’s best animal photos of the year. This time, with a beluga calf at the top, it’s curated by Kathy Moran, our deputy director of photography and soon-to-retire 40-year Nat Geo veteran. Over the years, she says she’s seen an important change in how we cover animals. 

“When I first started, what you’d see were the animal stories, and it was pure wildlife—pure natural history,” she told Natasha Daly. But now? Context. “I really felt that the most amazing natural history image was meaningless if that animal was under threat from X, Y, and Z, and we didn’t show it.” 

That, for example, includes a delightful family of meerkats standing on guard in the Kalahari Desert, where a warming climate is increasingly putting a carefully calibrated ecosystem at risk. Or an extreme close-up of an orchid bee, which gave me new appreciation for the beauty of bugs—and what devastation may come if we lose them. And there’s what I consider the biggest emotional punch of the year: The orphaned mountain gorilla Ndakasi taking her final breaths in her caregiver’s arms. If that doesn’t move you to care about animals, I don’t know what will. 

See a few examples below—and the full selection here. What’s your favorite?

Protecting the panthers: A male panther leaps over a creek at Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Florida. We wrote in March about how the rarely seen cats, which number only around 200, are threatened by suburban sprawl. In June, Florida enacted sweeping protections for wildlife corridors.

Headshots: That’s what Eduard Florin Niga calls his photographs of the faces of ants in microscopic detail. The images reveal the diversity and yes, the beauty of these insects, we reported in May. At left is a bullet ant, which is native to Latin America and has one of the most painful stings of any insect. At right is a member of the Camponotus genus, which has more than a thousand species.

Why don’t you waddle? Nat Geo Explorer Melanie Wenger photographed this penguin staring toward a stuffed bear in a house in Cape Town, South Africa, which is home to a large breeding colony of African penguins. What’s a penguin doing inside a home? Some penguins have become habituated to humans, and a few guesthouses use them as a selling point. Experts warn that this habituation leads to birds crossing roads or being struck by cars, we reported in October.

Watch out! In this image by photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Nichole Sobecki, a seven-month-old cheetah in the back of an SUV hisses at a rescuer’s outstretched hand. Authorities intercepted the cub, later named Astur, before he could be sold to a smuggler. But every year scores—perhaps hundreds—of mostly very young cheetahs are trafficked out of Somaliland to Persian Gulf states to be sold as pets, we reported in August.

A quiet goodbye: Ndakasi the mountain gorilla passed away in her caregiver's arms on September 26, shortly after this photo was taken, following a prolonged illness. Andre Bauma and others at the Senkwekwe Mountain Gorilla Center, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have cared for her since 2007, when she was found as an infant clinging to her mother’s dead body. Ndakasi was the only one of her family of critically endangered mountain gorillas to survive an execution-style attack that was later linked to illegal charcoal producers, reported photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Brent Stirton, who was present when she was found and documented her life for the next 14 years.

Giraffe rescue: When their island in Kenya was flooded, eight rare Rothschild giraffes had nowhere to go. They were rescued by a team that built a barge of metal drums, steel beams, and tarps. Writer Annie Roth and photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Ami Vitale documented the rescue, one by one, of the animals to a newly built sanctuary on the mainland.

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TODAY IN A MINUTE

Four-legged spectators: Ever been out for a game of golf and a kangaroo hops across the course? Ok, maybe not a kangaroo, but a moose? CNN has compiled a photo gallery of animals that have sauntered on to golf courses to watch a match. Take a look. 

Botox? Really? In one of the weirdest animal stories of the year, injections of Botox and other artificial touch-ups led to the disqualification of more than 40 beauty contestants in Saudi Arabia. Um, the “contestants” were camels. You may laugh, but the payout is serious, the AP reports. The annual competition offers $66 million in prize money. Nat Geo subscribers can see a 2009 account of a camel beauty contest here.

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THE LAST GLIMPSE

Marking the spot: Researchers studying Arctic foxes remark on their mischievousness and curiosity. Both were on display by the fox that Nat Geo Explorer Jeffrey Kerby photographed (above) while he was setting up a time-lapse camera in northeast Greenland. “It came over, took a look, and promptly peed on my solar panel box before running off,” Kerby said. “Still, I appreciated the visit.” The Arctic foxes in the area, near the Zackenberg Research Station, are monitored by a program that has tracked changes in their population going back to 1996.

ARCTIC FOXES 101