Bird Reveals Its Third Eyelid in Scientific Photo Competition

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A close-up of a secretary bird with its beak open, capturing a grasshopper. The bird's distinctive long feathers on its head are visible. The background is a blurred green field.

The winner of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2024 has been announced with an image of a shark hunt form above taking home the top prize.

The competition, run in association with the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) this year, celebrates incredible images that shed new light on hidden scientific phenomena.

This year’s overall winner, from the behavior category, is The Hunt from Above by Dr Angela Albi, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, who studies the predator-prey interactions of sharks and schools of fish.

“Just after sunrise or before sundown, the shallow waters of the Maldives become a clear, see-through surface,” she says.

“These are also the moments when we best observe the interactions between reef sharks and their prey. In this frame, captured during a research trip in 2024, a shark on the far left shifts suddenly from swimming calmly within the school to initiating a hunt, its body posture standing out from the others. While we still don’t know what triggers these attacks, we analyse videos to study how sharks hunt and how their prey responds collectively.”