The award for best comedy wildlife photo goes to... | Tom Sullam

0:03Tom Sullam: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Even in the darkest of times, there are signs all around us that there's so much beauty in the world, and that is worth stopping, even if just for a second, to notice and appreciate the wonder of it all. For photographer and wildlife enthusiast Tom Sullam, noticing nature is the greatest way to learn how to see this wonder. and better protect it. But he does this with a twist.

0:33Elise Hu: We wanted to use humor to address the serious topic of conservation. And in so doing, encourage people to look up and appreciate what they get from wildlife.

0:43Tom Sullam: Today, he helps to run the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, a global annual competition whose mission is to help us enjoy the silly, beautiful wonders of the natural world around us in order to support conservation. In November 2025, he took to the TED stage to share what he's learned from the thousands of submissions they've received over the years. And he did this by sharing a series of ever more amusing and adorable photos of wildlife, which, as you'll hear, makes us laugh and ooh and ah. And yet they also offer a simple and profound truth. The pictures I've shown you today are a reminder to us

1:21Elise Hu: that it's our job to be custodians of these tender moments, that we should accept coexistence rather than complete separation from wildlife.

1:31Tom Sullam: We wanted to make sure that this message could be shared with our podcast listeners as well, so we're doing something a little different on the feed. We reached out to Tom and asked if he would describe the images he shared in his talk for our listening audiences, which we've included here alongside portions of his talk.

1:47Elise Hu: The second image comes up and it's a black bird with the most unbelievably negative scowl. It's the most perfectly angry bird you'll ever see.

1:56Tom Sullam: That's coming up right after a short break from our sponsors.

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5:19Elise Hu: My name is Tom Sulem. I'm currently in London in the UK, where I'm from. I'm a professional photographer. I specialize in architecture, which has got nothing to do with wildlife. but I'm here to talk to you about my other project, which is the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards that I founded.

5:39Elise Hu: I'd like to introduce you to this Comedy Wildlife competition. Now, no one's day will ever be as chilled as that of a raccoon. Indeed, life throws bad days at all of us. Now, the pictures you're seeing today are the result of a wildlife photography competition that we created to recognize the positive values of wildlife. and how it impacts all of us. Now, as the competition developed, we started to receive thousands of photographs, more than we'd expected. And these photographs began to communicate with us in many different ways. But we began to appreciate the qualities and charm of these animals.

6:17Elise Hu: And we began to put pictures together that told a story. One of our favorite pictures is the picture of a brown bear looking very innocent in a small river area with little seagulls floating by. But what makes this picture ridiculous is the timing because behind the bear are these two beautiful wings that come out either side of its head as if it's part of the bear, which it isn't. But the photographer did a marvellous job here. And everyone knows that cheetahs are the fastest mammal on the land, but no one knows that they're terrified of being caught speeding. We have this image of a cheetah which can run up to 75 miles per hour but it's sitting very politely on a little dusty track staring at a 40 mile per hour sign as if this cheater's understood well unfortunately i won't be able to use my speed here away from the speed merchants you've got the sportos the sport jocks then you've got your left brains the creatives the ones that maybe focus more on their music air guitar in the wild at this point in the talk i chose this particular image of a kangaroo in this beautiful yellow flower field, doing what can only be described as air guitar.

7:30Elise Hu: And the audience reacted as I'd hoped. And then maybe like dancing as if nobody was watching. One of the most beautiful images that's been entered is an image of an otter surrounded by falling green leaves, but in the most incredible ballerina position. It's like a dancer frozen in time. It's a beautiful photograph. Beyond that, you have the superheroes, the ones that influence the Marvel comics. The Jedi squirrel, most powerful Jedi in the world. He controls all the nuts. It's important with these images that you show the ridiculous behavior as well as the stunning behavior. And one of our previous winners is this picture of a squirrel.

8:15Elise Hu: Both front feet are pointing out as if shouting stop, as if he was a Jedi, as if he has full control with his mouth and his eyes wide open. It's a showstopping photograph. So what you're finding funny about these pictures, hopefully, is a little bit different to your neighbor and to the neighbor next to them and so on and so forth. And the result is that it's unconditionally personal, your reaction, which makes these pictures very accessible to everyone. but it also makes them cross-border and multicultural, which is why this competition has succeeded. I wanted to demonstrate how two different people might look at the same picture and see two different things.

8:57Elise Hu: And this is an image of two seals, to me, both laughing outrageously at having a good time together, but to the person next to me when we first saw it. It could also just be a very casual backhanded slap. It depends how you see it. We started to see some more similarities as we looked at these pictures. This is the same family around that we all have. And within these families, you have partnerships of mature and intelligent adults who talk and understand each other. And those partnerships are normally made up of a talker and maybe a listener. To drive this point home, I chose this picture of a male lion and a female lion.

9:36Elise Hu: and she is roaring into the lion's face, and he is literally backing away from the fumes that she's throwing onto him. It's a very anthropomorphic image. The children also seem to show similarities to us humans. They need little and no supervision. They share without being asked, which is lovely. There's a beautiful picture of two puffins. One of them has got his mouth full with a dozen fish, and his friend next to him is staring at him with sad eyes because he came back from the fish with nothing. And there is not going to be any sharing, I don't think. And then you have the teenage years. Well, the teenage years, they do the same thing.

10:18They have no awareness whatsoever.

10:21Elise Hu: During the talk, I take the audience with me to discuss adolescents and teenagers. And I open with an image of a gorilla in Uganda picking his nose. They have the very, very common trait of the staying in bed all day illness. As a follow-up, I showed a lion cub resting very unusually on the end of a tree trunk with his bum in the air. And then the even more common trait of too much screen time.

10:54We had one image of a young chimpanzee staring at a leaf and his eyes are literally cross-eyed,

11:01Elise Hu: so it seemed to match exactly the troubles we all have with our own phones. And if they're not picking their nose on the screen or in bed, that's the cool kids, and they're out the back having a cigarette. This is a very simple image of a duck, and the early morning cold is allowing its breath to be very visible, so it looks a bit like the duck is smoking. Someone said duck smoking quack, which I love.

11:31Elise Hu: But if you put a camera on these guys, they react like all of us. They love it. We came together because we wanted to use a positive force to influence human behavior. We wanted to use humor to address the serious topic of conservation. And in so doing, encourage people to look up and appreciate what they get from wildlife. Too many messages are negative about conservation. We wanted to do it the other way. The heroes of this competition are the real photographs of wildlife doing funny things. The success of the competition is based on authenticity. And the amount of AI talk is great because this means we're slightly different to everyone else.

12:10Elise Hu: Well, actually, the success of the competition, the pictures have to be funny. Fortunately, life is filled with these moments just waiting to be captured. You know, life has been speeding up. I think technology has made everything so much quicker. being a photographer, I actively slowed everything down. And so I think you suddenly do start to notice and appreciate what's around you. And I think the beauty of the humor and how we realized that the humor in these images would give us a power. And that power was of being able to convince people that there is a different way to think about wildlife.

12:44Elise Hu: And if you can think about wildlife differently and see it differently, then your attitude can also change and become more empathetic towards it. Seeing the funny side of animals is not just for six-year-old kids to have a laugh at. It's from children through to adults. It should be as important a tool in getting people to be aware of what's going on in the world. This is our 10th year and each year we get tens of thousands more entries, unbelievably, and they get better and better and harder and harder to judge. But we do get there eventually. Cartier-Bresson, French photographer, talks about the decisive moment, That moment when you see an image through your camera and you press click and you take that shot and you make it permanent.

13:25Elise Hu: This young lion would discover what a decisive moment could also mean. And to drive this point home, we have this incredible image of a young lion cub reaching out with his claws visibly showing. And he's about to grab the male lion's testicles. It's going to be painful. But as I said at the beginning, life is not all good. We have our bad days. That's my thing. Towards the end of the talk, I really desperately wanted to include my favourite image, which is an image of a buffalo in East Africa with a white egret standing on its head. They do this very often. What they don't do very often is then poo on top of the buffalo's head.

14:04Elise Hu: And you can see it very clearly running down the front of the buffalo's nose. It encapsulates everything about a bad day that we all go through. But the bad days mean that life is also full of joy and wonder. And sometimes that joy and wonder converge onto the absolutely ludicrous. And so here I chose a photo that really would genuinely show that wonder, and it's a snapping turtle with a dragonfly rested on the snapping turtle's nose, and the impression is that the snapping turtle is genuinely smiling at seeing his friend again. Our culture over the years has grown to create a divide between us and wildlife.

14:41Elise Hu: The Halcyon days of coexistence are now long gone. But we believe we can change that balance just by changing the narrative from negative to positive. My 13-year-old son, rather innocently and surprisingly sweetly, said he thought these pictures made the animals feel more human, more equal, in my mind, more relatable. And I agree with him. These images raise our spirits. They create a positive emotion. That positive emotion leads to empathy. and it's empathy which leads to attitudinal and behavioural change.

15:19Elise Hu: Don't just see wildlife as something that happens miles away from home. It's everywhere. It's pigeons, it's squirrels, it's everything all around us. If everyone took a tiny step, that would be a huge step on a global scale. Someone wrote in saying, what could I do? I live in a block of flats in Chicago. If I said, go and save all the lions, The lady in Chicago is not going to be able to do that, so it's not much use. But she can get some flower pots and have some bees there. The lions will be saved if everyone does their little step. So I think don't be overwhelmed by the challenges ahead. We're still OK.

15:53Elise Hu: There's still a chance. The pictures I've shown you today, which are a tiny fraction of the thousands that we have, are a reminder to us that it's our job to be custodians of these tender moments, that we should accept coexistence rather than separation, complete separation from wildlife. And finally, that diversity on the planet is a privilege that we should cherish. However, to finish the talk, I know I needed to put in an image that would land and stay with everyone. And you have this turtle in Australia whose fin appears to be flicking the middle finger at the camera. and it was exactly what I needed to demonstrate how wildlife does need a bit more attention and care because we may have to be honest with ourselves and accept that some species may already have had enough of us.

16:49Thank you.

16:51Elise Hu: Thank you very much.

17:01Tom Sullam: That was Tom Sulem at TED Next 2025. And for those that are able, I would highly recommend watching the video of his talk on TED.com. You won't regret it. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. This episode was produced by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandra Salazar and Ban Ban Chang, fact-checked by the TED research team, and engineered by Lucy Little. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. Our team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong.

17:38Tom Sullam: Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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