Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Behaviour, invertebrates
Audio description
Transcript
This is ‘The Demolition Squad’ by Ingo Arndt from Germany. This photograph was taken in Hessen, Germany and is the 2024 category winner of ‘Behaviour: Invertebrates.’ The thing that's probably most striking about this busy image is the giant blue beetle, right in the centre. It takes up the centre of the photo, and it's in three parts with a giant abdomen, a slightly smaller torso and a smaller head. The colour of the beetle is stunning, iridescent blues, violets and indigos all across its body and abdomen. The colours are electrifying and almost metallic looking. It looks like a piece of jewelry that's been slightly dented. On its head, there are jet black, bold and semicircles. These are their eyes, right on the sides of its head. They look like buttons. Its front pincers on its head are also jet black, as are its arms and legs. This is in contrast to the very metallic, very colourful body. It almost doesn't look real. A red ant has climbed on the beetle’s body and has stood on its torso, holding onto its antennae. The beetle is swimming in ants. It almost looks like it's drowning, as if it's falling into a sea of them. This one ant, that has climbed on top of it, is standing on its rear legs reaching up with its front legs to hold on to the beetle’s antennae. The antenna on the beetle’s left side has only three segments, whereas the antenna on the right side has five. The ant is nibbling at the bottom of the second segment. Perhaps a beetle has already lost one part of his antennae from being chewed off. It is quite a terrifying image really. The dead beetle is being pulled into pieces by the red ants. But what makes this photo even more unsettling is there is such a focus on the blue beetle and the ants that's on top of it, that you don't really notice a second ant which is climbing on the back of the beetle's abdomen. The background is a very mossy green, but it's not in focus. The rest of the surroundings have the tones of autumnal orange, and at first look like leaves. But as you look closer, you realise that it is in fact a swarm of ants. There are legs everywhere which look like the stems of leaves, they're that thin. These ants are almost climbing on top of each other to reach this beetle. You realise the entire photo is ants. You’re initially drawn to this bright blue beetle in the middle of the photograph, yet it takes you a while to realise that there's more going on. The beetle has been flipped on its side. You can see very small black hair on the beetles’ legs, a bit like the hair on a Kiwi fruit.