Tapir pallor

National Geographic contributing photographer Luciano Candisani set out to capture on film the legendary albino tapir said to roam the rainforest of southeastern Brazil. While unsuccessfully stalking the creature under cover of darkness, he met with success after setting up a camera trap, and describes, "My heart skipped a beat when, while reviewing the photos from one night, the white tapir suddenly appeared in one of the frames."

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Turtle tummy

Professor of photographic sciences Ted Kinsman of the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York picked up a dead snapping turtle from the side of the road, x-rayed it, added false color to the 30 eggs he found inside, and won the Expert's Choice award for Photography at the 2015 Vizzies (SEE THE OTHER WINNING PHOTOGRAPHS HERE.)

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Octoportrait

This is the result of an octopus turning the tables on digital media producer Ben Savard of Middlebury College in Vermont, U.S., when he was documenting the animals studied in the Neuroscience Department. He relates, "I put a GoPro in a waterproof casing, set it to take a rapid number of photos per second and, with the help of the neuroscience student behind me in the photos, placed the camera in the octopus tank. We did this a few times with different octopuses and one of the more cheeky cephalopods grabbed the camera and turned it around on me for a quick couple of pictures."

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Weasel on the wing

Amateur British photographer Martin Le-May was at Hornchurch Country Park in east London when he captured the almost unbelievable sight of a weasel riding on the back of a green woodpecker as it flies through the air. Wildlife expert Lucy Cooke explains: "This is a truly extraordinary image. The green woodpecker is a ground-feeding bird, but weasels normally attack rabbits. The woodpecker is not its usual prey. But weasels are fearless. A female weasel weighs less than a Mars Bar but is as ferocious as a lion, so this is why the woodpecker would have been able to take off with it on its back."

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Parturition in progress

British biologist Simon Oliver of the University of Chester and his team were doing a survey at a seamount in the Philippines, where vulnerable thresher sharks often congregate to have smaller fish clean them of parasites. There was an added bonus in an image of one of the sharks (ABOVE) captured by photographer Attila Kaszo. Oliver remembers, "He took the picture of the shark, and when he processed the image and showed it to me, I freaked out." it was the first photographic record of a pelagic shark giving birth. While the scientists were excited, the shark was apparently unconcerned. The thresher was not thrashing and there were no signs of a midwife!

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Monkey business

In Bali, a woman attempted to take a selfie with a monkey, but it yanked on her hair, leaving them both screaming (IMAGE ABOVE). Meanwhile, in Marseilles, France, a feral monkey had to be subdued with a taser when it began menacing elementary school children who had been feeding it chocolate.

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Mark Twain moving

The only existing footage of 19th c. American author Mark Twain has just been digitally restored by TFG Film & Tape. He is shown circumnavigating his house in Redding, Connecticut, U.S., and sitting inside with his daughters Clara and Jean. The film (COMPARE BEFORE AND AFTER HERE) was made by Thomas Edison's company in 1909, just a year before Twain died. We think we know the author so well from portrayals by Hal Holbrook and others that Josh Jones writes in Open Culture, "[The restoration] does wonders for the watchability of this priceless silent artifact, so vividly capturing the writer/contrarian/raconteur’s essence that you’ll find yourself reaching to turn the volume up, expecting to hear that familiar curmudgeonly drawl."

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Bitty blue marble

In the unique perspective of this photograph taken last month from just outside lunar orbit by China’s lunar test probe, Chang’e 5TI, our planet looks miniscule compared to the moon. In fact, the moon is only 27% the size of the earth and has only about 2% of its volume (MORE HERE).

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Camel cam

Google has enlisted the help of a 10-year-old dromedary camel to capture video and still images of the Liwa Desert in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, as part of their worldwide mapping mission. Wearing one of the company’s Trekker cameras like a Crittercam, "Raffia" is being led through the sand (VIDEO HERE). Joyce Baz, Google’s spokesperson in the Middle East and North Africa, points out, "With every environment and every location, we try to customize the capture and how we do it for that part of the environment. In the case of Liwa we fashioned it [in such a way that the camera] goes on a camel so that it can capture imagery in the best, most authentic and least damaging way.”

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Eiffel eyeful

As part of a campaign by SOS: Save Our Species, a camera was strapped to the back of an endangered white-tailed eagle, which flew over Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower to a fan- filled stadium (VIDEO HERE).

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Pregnant petrel

Today another first, this time in the ornithological world. Researchers were throwing chum overboard in the Indian Ocean off the only breeding site of the Mascarene petrel (Pseudobulweria aterrima). They managed to lure 33 of the dwindling and little-studied birds, 12 of which they caught on camera. One of these was a female of the estimated 100 breeding pairs of these petrels that remain. And she had a baby bump! The photograph (ABOVE, MORE IMAGES HERE) is the first documented image of any bird flying while obviously bearing an egg. The photographer Hadoram Shirihai describes, "Against the background of a pinkish-orange sunset, with Réunion Island in the distance, I spotted a petrel through my camera’s viewfinder. Almost immediately I saw the outline of an egg, a huge bump at its belly. I called out to the other expedition members -- ‘she has an egg, she has an egg...’. She flew close to the boat which gave me the unique chance to photograph her just before the sun set. It was a magical moment, and to think that in less than an hour she would probably lay her egg and contribute to the future survival of this threatened species.”

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Rosamond, recorded

"I don't need subjects that are conventionally beautiful. With, say, a parrot, there's not much for me to figure out. Something that is obviously beautiful gets all the credit, and then I don't have to do much work. For example, skulls are fabulous. And bones have such a variety of shapes to suit specialized purposes. What I really like about a femur, for example, is the way it twists." ~ American photographer Rosamond Purcell, quoted in National Geographic. One of my favorite artists, she has spent her career photographing specimens behind the closed doors at museums. For instance, that is a trunkfish above from the Tradescant Collection, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, U.K. (SLIDESHOW HERE, VIDEO HERE).

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Cherry carry

With the help of his brother Richard, Cherry Kearton (who, coincidentally enough, died on the steps of the BBC in 1940) became one of the world's first professional wildlife photographers. They began in the 1890s taking pictures of birds in their natural habitats in their home village of Thwaite, Yorkshire, U.K., with a box camera, but they took the risk of startling their quarry using the cumbersome apparatus. So they began to devise ways to disguise themselves in the field, as boulders, limestone walls, and trees. But they began with the ox blind Cherry is carrying in the image above. They obtained the hide from their butcher, had it prepared by a London taxidermist, outfitted its head with a camera, and hid inside for hours at great physical expense. Recalled Richard, "Once out of sheer agony I dropped from the bottom. Upon seeing me [the bird] sprang almost vertically in the air and, dropping among the grass, stared with outstretched neck in blank amazement."

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New York by NASA

This view from space (MORE HERE) was taken from the International Space Station on May 5th, 2014. It shows the island of Manhattan, between the Hudson River and the East River, in the early afternoon. The green of Central Part is dotted with white playing courts, and Midtown and the Financial District are darkened by the shadows of the skyscrapers.

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Ursuspended

A black bear had already been spotted many times in the Pebble Creek neighborhood of Daytona Beach, Florida, U.S., when homeowner Vincent James looked in his backyard and saw this. He describes, "He got in the hammock like he was a tourist or something. Then something spooked him and he ran right back there. Then half an hour later I come back and I saw there he is in the hammock again." After scavenging for food in trash cans and birdfeeders, the bear apparently needed a rest and stayed in the hammock for 20 minutes before heading back into the woods.

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Elephant selfie!

While not participating in a formal enrichment program, African elephant "Latabe" snapped a self-portrait while apparently mistaking a cell phone for food. Scott Brierley and his friend were driving through the elephant enclosure at West Midlands Safari Park, near Bewdley in Worcestershire, U.K., when the phone fell out of his hand. Ordered to remain in the car, the 23-year-old – only a year older than the elephant – had to wait for its return. Exclaims Brierley, "I really couldn't believe when the phone came back, I pressed the centre button to check it was still working and there it was - me and my friend were in shock."

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Polio video

The image above is one of only three known to exist of the 32nd president of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt in a wheelchair. He was diagnosed with poliomyelitis at the age of 39, but the extent of his paralysis was kept from the public. But now an even rarer glimpse of history has surfaced. Jimmie DeShong of the Philadelphia Athletics was in Washington, D.C., to pitch for the 1937 All Star game, which the president attended. Using his 8 mm home movie camera, he captured footage of Lou Gehrig and other players, but also several seconds of Roosevelt climbing a ramp with the help of the handrail, an assistant, and the braces he wore. DeShong's daughter has donated the film to the Pennsylvania State Archives just in time for filmmaker Ken Burns to include it in his new documentary. Burns comments, "We were thrilled with the discovery of a new piece of film footage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt walking. Any film of him struggling to get from one place to another is extremely rare, as the Secret Service either prohibited or confiscated cameras whenever FDR was making an attempt to propel himself from his car to anywhere else."

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Bríef reef

Scientists have determined that the green sea slug – because it produces chlorophyll – is part plant and part animal. Meanwhile, I am still warming up to the fact that coral is an animal. Australian photographer Daniel Stoupin, a doctoral student in marine biology at the University of Queensland, makes that clearer with a 3 1/2 minute high–magnification time-lapse video that took him 9 months to create. As its title indicates, coral live at an infinitesimally smaller pace than we do. Watch the video HERE.

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Queen Mary II

Cunard liner Queen Mary II - 236' (72 m) high from keel to funnel -. dwarfs her captain. Kevin Oprey was recently photographed by James Morgan standing beneath the ship's soaring hull. The London-based photojournalist comments, "I’ve always tried to take pictures that capture the public imagination. It is this towering creature and this little man, it is an incredible juxtaposition. He is an incredible man, this beautiful huge liner he controls every day."

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PigPro

Questionable videos and legitimate scientific photographs have gone viral touting the durability of the GoPro camera. So whether this one is authentic or a set-up, it is still fun to watch. The clip was posted on February 9th by Mia Munselle, who has a presence – but no biographical information – on YouTube and Twitter. “Camera falls from a skydiving aeroplane and lands on my property in my pig pen. I found the camera eight months later and viewed this video,” Munselle writes. The location of the farm is not indicated and no skydiver has come forward to claim the camera, so the story remains unconfirmed. But the video (WATCH IT TO THE END) is hilarious!

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