Dancing mice, feasting wolves and tigers on relaxation: the best photos of 2019 according to National Geographic

An authoritative National Geographic jury has selected the 100 best photos for 2019, having viewed more than two million images from 106 photographers. Among the contenders for the victory are stunning pictures from around the world, where you can see dancing rats, feasting wolves in Arctic, as well as a picture of a famous rock climber conquering Mount El Capitan without insurance.

Rats are social animals. They take great care of the offspring. Experiments have shown that these animals experience empathy: they will release a relative from the cage even at the cost of depriving themselves of a treat.

It is believed that the famous painting depicts Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Every year millions of visitors to the Louvre strive to see this portrait, which became a legend thanks to the theft by an Italian nationalist at the beginning of the XX century. The painting, protected by a thick layer of glass that needs to be cleaned regularly, has never been restored.

To take this picture, photographer Ronan Donovan placed an automatic camera inside the corpse of the deceased animal. The flock returned to the carcass again and again, gnawing on the remains for a month.

Clay, Daniel and Enzo are three of the 39 tigers rescued from an animal park in Oklahoma. These predatory cats are lucky — now they will live in the reserve with proper nutrition and veterinary care.

This monolith peak is located in California's Yosemite Valley and legendary American climber Alex Honnold climbed it without ropes or protective equipment. Before accomplishing his feat on June 3, 2017, Honnold spent almost a decade planning the climb and more than a year and a half training.

The deer cave of Borneo is home to more than two million bats of several species, which usually fly out in the evenings to hunt.

Marines should be able to carry each other if necessary. The photo was taken while preparing for deployment on a Navy ship at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Of the 38,000 recruits who enter this corps every year, about 3,500 are women.

Greenland seal cubs are born on the ice. But now bald men are less likely to survive due to global warming. Without a thick solid ice cover, baby seals fall through the ice and drown or fall under cracking blocks of ice.

A pangolin named Tamuda is looking for ants or termites in a rehabilitation center in Zimbabwe. The animal was seized from poachers, who probably would have been transported to Asia, where parts of the pangolin bodies are used for the manufacture of alternative medicine.

Once or twice a month during the rainy season in Costa Rica, tens of thousands of Ridley sea turtles come ashore and lay eggs during mass nesting, which is also called arribada. Small turtles begin to hatch after about 45 days.

In the photo, Bhagavan Entl (far right) and his assistants (from left to right: Cody Antle, Moksha Bybi and China York). Photos and games with tiger cubs cost the guests of the show $ 339-689. At the age of 12 weeks, tiger cubs are already considered dangerous to humans.

At the end of the dry season , the dried - up bed of the Musitsaji River in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park attracts flocks of hungry birds, including storks, herons and hammerheads. The diversity of the bird fauna of Gorongosa increases during the rainy season, when migratory birds come here to feed.