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The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award has been showcasing the best of nature photography for decades. Each year, it reveals the diversity of the natural world, but also mankind's uncanny proximity to it.
The image below, which was the Overall Winner of the 2019 contest, is called The Moment and it was shot by Chinese photographer Yongqing Bao.
It captures the inevitable entanglement of fear, love and survival. A mother fox with three young cubs to feed, a terrified marmot, and the right timing. We cannot help but let our biggest dramas diminish in the face of such spectacles, or at least feel for one, or all, of the parties involved. When encountering moments like these, we remember not only that right and wrong are not as black and white as they seem, but also that it is perfectly acceptable for a variety of emotions to be present at the same moment in time, no matter how conflicting they may be.
This Himalayan marmot was not long out of hibernation when it was surprised by a mother Tibetan fox with three hungry cubs to feed. With lightning-fast reactions, Yongqing captured the attack – the power of the predator baring her teeth, the terror of her prey, the intensity of life and death written on their faces.
As one of the highest-altitude-dwelling mammals, the Himalayan marmot relies on its thick fur for survival through the extreme cold. In the heart of winter it spends more than six months in an exceptionally deep burrow with the rest of its colony. Marmots usually do not resurface until spring, an opportunity not to be missed by hungry predators.
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