10 Selfies by Some of the World’s Most Endangered Animals
‘Candid Creatures’ features hundreds of photos of wildlife snapped by camera traps.

Sunda Clouded Leopard
A Sunda clouded leopard pauses for his portrait in Borneo’s Tawau Hills National Park. “Clouded leopards are forest animals, and camera traps most often detect them in evergreen forests,” writes Kays. The species is “tolerant of some level of hunting, as camera traps showed that they continued to survive in an Indian preserve after the tigers, as well as much of the prey, had been overhunted by illegal poaching.”
(Photo: Sebastian Kennerknecht/Candid Creatures)

Giant Panda
A pair of pandas stop for a drink in a thicket of bamboo, the plant that makes up 99 percent of this species’ diet. “With the panda’s skid toward extinction apparently halted, conservationists are now looking for sustainable solutions,” writes Kays. “Camera traps are important tools for monitoring their populations within panda reserves…and hopefully will continue to capture cute photos of these animals long into the future.”
(Photo: Sheng Li/Candid Creatures)

African Forest Elephant
An older adult male elephant comes up from a swim in the Echira River in Gabon’s Loango National Park. “Camera traps have been more important for studying forest elephants than bush elephants because they are harder to find and watch in person,” Kays notes. “Each elephant has a unique appearance, based on size, ear shape, and scarring patterns. By placing camera traps in a regular grid across the forests of Loango National Park, Gabon, Josephine Head and colleagues were able to photograph and identify 139 unique individuals, estimating a density of 0.54 animals” per square mile.
(Photo: Michael Nichols/Candid Creatures)

Malayan Tapir
The Malayan tapir has the longest snout of the five tapir species and is “Southeast Asia’s least known species of megafauna,” writes Kays. To learn more about this species, which is endangered by loss of its preferred evergreen forest habitat, 37 biologists combined images and data representing “52,904 camera trap days of effort across 1,128 locations in 19 nature preserves.”
(Photo: Ruben Clements/Rimba/Candid Creatures)

Giant Sable Antelope
A herd of female sable antelope congregates around a salt lick in Cangandala National Park in Angola, which makes the site a good location for a camera trap. “Unfortunately, poachers have also discovered these animal hot spots and are often caught on camera as they patrol by,” Kays writes. “They have seen and destroyed enough camera traps at this site that scientists now have to climb trees and mount them out of sight.”
(Photo: Pedro Vaz Pinto/Candid Creatures)

Black Cod
A large adult black cod approaches a baited underwater video station in the rocky reefs of eastern Australia—a “big beautiful fish that also has the misfortune of being delicious,” Kays writes. Overfishing devastated populations of this Australia–New Zealand fish from the 1950s through the 1970s. Its numbers have not bounced back despite more than 30 years of protection. “Out in the deeper waters around rocky reefs some large adults are now seen by snorkelers and photographed by baited remote underwater video stations,” Kays continues. “However, young fish are almost never seen, raising concerns over the next generation of black cod.”
(Photo: David Harasti/Candid Creatures)

Tasmanian Devil
A Tasmanian devil runs away from a bird carcass that served as its recent meal. Found only on the Australian island of Tasmania, the devil population has plunged 90 percent since 1996 owing to a unique, transmissible facial cancer. But camera trapping at one location has buoyed hope for the species, Kays writes. “[D]evils at Freycinet National Park suffered only a small initial population decline when the cancer first arrived,” he writes, “but the population has bounced back. The tumors can be identified in good camera trap photos, allowing officials to see that it was never common in the park, and that it has declined since 2006.”
(Photo: Heath Holden/Candid Creatures)

Giant Pangolin
A giant pangolin rears up, showing its fierce claws. Its heavy tail acts as a counterbalance, allowing it to run with very little weight on its front feet, keeping its claws sharp for digging into termite or ant mounds.
Rampant poaching of pangolins for their scales, which command large sums on China’s black market, has threatened the species’ survival. Along with campaigns to reduce public demand for pangolin parts and intensified policing of the illegal wildlife trade, Kays writes, conservationists “on the ground in African and Asian forests [are] patrolling for poachers and using camera traps to try to determine where the pangolin populations persist.”
(Photo: Laila Bahaa-el-din/Panthera/Candid Creatures)

Bornean Orangutan
A baby orangutan crosses a gap in the forest to catch up with its mother. Conversion of forests to palm oil plantations has been a major factor in Bornean orangutan population declines. “The species is threatened by habitat destruction and by selective logging,” Keys writes. “Camera trap surveys can map where these monkeys still roam, helping to target conservation efforts.”
(Photo: Oliver Wearn/SAFE Project/Candid Creatures)

Western Gorilla
The world’s largest primate, weighing up to 600 pounds, the western gorilla is critically endangered thanks to poaching, Ebola epidemics, and loss of its lowland rainforest habitat. This silverback male gorilla encountered a camera trap in Gabon. “Tracking the declines and recoveries of gorilla numbers over these remote areas is challenging, and many traditional methods have since been found to be unreliable, or too difficult to scale up,” writes Kays. “A few recent studies with camera traps suggest that they could be a useful tool to help count and protect gorillas,” in part because “gorillas have unique faces and can often be identified from photos.”
(Photo: Laila Bahaa-el-din/Panthera/Candid Creatures)

10 Stunning Photographs of Animals That Live in Total Darkness
For decades people have looked to the skies for signs of alien life. But it turns out that it has been in our midst all along, in places almost as otherworldly to most of us: the light-starved zones underground and at the bottoms of oceans, rivers, and lakes.
“Most people don’t realize just how many habitable places there are on Earth with little or no light,” biologist and wildlife photographer Danté Fenolio writes in his new book, Life in the Dark: Illuminating Biodiversity in the Shadowy Haunts of Planet Earth. Styled as a naturalist’s guide, the book combines accomplished photography and accessible, well-referenced writing to introduce dozens of creatures that have evolved to thrive in these environments.
Some survive by supplying their own light—take the translucent deep-sea dragonfish, which lures prey by wiggling a bioluminescent blob attached to the end of a long, skinny rod that juts off its giant and toothy lower jaw. This fish attracts potential mates with “glowing spots and organs” on its body that, Fenolio writes, make it look “something like a Dr. Seuss character blended with a Christmas tree.”
Others are blind, like the pallid, eyeless phantom cave crayfish, which relies on its extra long legs and antennae to touch and feel its way around its subterranean world.
Fenolio is fascinated with the diverse adaptations these animals have made to survive without sunlight. He also wants to be sure readers know that many of the living things in the dark are being threatened by the same forces driving extinctions of animals and plants in the light: pollution, overharvesting, and loss of their habitats.
“My hope is that these images will lead you to question what you know of nature and how you feel about the state of the environment,” he writes. “Ask yourself how you want your children’s and your grandchildren’s life experience with the natural world to be...and consider supporting any environmental movement with which you connect.”