There is a frog in a headlock. A family of lions in hysterics. And somewhere in the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards’ 2025 finalist collection, there is almost certainly an animal doing something so perfectly, absurdly human that you will stop scrolling and laugh out loud before you have even registered what you are looking at.
That is entirely the point.
Founded in 2015 by wildlife photographer Paul Joynson-Hicks MBE from a small office on the slopes of Mount Meru in Tanzania, the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards has grown into one of the most watched photography competitions in the world — and one of the most quietly effective conservation platforms around. The public vote for this year’s finalists closes on 1st March, and it is well worth five minutes of your time.
Why funny works
The premise is deceptively simple. A funny animal photograph has no barriers — no difficult imagery to process, no statistics to absorb, no guilt to navigate. What it does have is an immediate, instinctive pull. You look longer. You look again. You wonder what the animal was thinking. And in that moment of connection, something shifts.
“Issues of wildlife conservation and sustainability are gaining momentum globally, yet the messages and images tend to be negative, depressing and enervating,” says Joynson-Hicks. The Comedy Wildlife Awards exist as a direct response to that — using humour and anthropomorphism, one of the most powerful triggers for human empathy, to bring people closer to the animals and habitats that need their attention.
The results speak for themselves. Each year the competition receives thousands of entries from photographers around the world, generates global media coverage, and reaches an audience that might never engage with a conventional conservation campaign. Co-founder Tom Sullam and Michelle Wood, who joined the team in 2017, have helped build it into a genuine fixture on the international photography calendar.
This year’s finalists
The 2025 finalists are everything you would expect — animal expressions that range from indignant to bewildered, situations that could only have been captured by a photographer in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment, and a handful of images that are simply impossible to look at without smiling. These are photographs you return to, share, and remember.
The public vote is open now at comedywildlifephoto.com and closes on 1st March. Entry to the competition itself is free, with photographers able to submit up to ten images across portfolio and category entries each year.
Monaco knows the power of this idea
The concept of using photography to connect people with the natural world is one that resonates here in Monaco. The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation runs its own Environmental Photography Awards each year, with the winning and shortlisted images displayed along the Larvotto promenade — turning one of the Principality’s most walked stretches of coastline into an open-air gallery dedicated to the beauty and fragility of the planet.
Both competitions understand the same truth: that a powerful image does what statistics cannot. It makes you feel something. And feeling something, as any conservationist will tell you, is where change begins.
Vote for your favourite Comedy Wildlife finalist at comedywildlifephoto.com before 1st March.
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Main photo: ‘Now which direction is my nest’ by Alison Tuck, Comedy Wildlife