14 brutal, beautiful images from this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest

The winning photo from the 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest is dark and bloody: A black rhino lies dead on the ground in South Africa's Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park game reserve, its horn brutally sawed off.

Other winning photos showcase the beauty of nature — sharks circle in a column of water, a bear cub wrestles with its mother, and sperm whales gather to socialize.

The winners of the annual contest, which is produced by the Natural History Museum in London, were announced late Tuesday night. They were chosen from more than 50,000 entries submitted from 92 countries. A selection of preview images from the contest was released in September.

You can see the full gallery of winners and finalists on the museum's website, but we've published a selection of some winners and finalists below.

This red fox dove into a snowdrift in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, while trying to capture a vole — unsuccessfully.

This male orangutan swung down to the ground for a snack in Gunung Palung National Park in Borneo.

A nesting leatherback turtle journeys back to the ocean in Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge on the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.

Lions rarely attack giraffes, but the photographer Michael Cohen thinks these two in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, in South Africa, may have noticed that the animal's misshapen hooves made it difficult to run.

These brook trout were battling for a position as a female prepared to lay eggs in her nearby nest in the Magalloway River in Maine.

This Sumatran tiger cub was saved by an anti-poaching patrol from a snare in a rainforest in Aceh province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Sandbar sharks circle as they come together to feed or spawn in Oahu, Hawaii.

Shot and dehorned by poachers, this dead black rhino bull lies on the ground in South Africa's Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park game reserve.

In Arizona's Sonoran Desert National Monument, these saguaro cacti grow for up to 200 years. They spread as far underground as they stand above it to absorb rain.

Dozens of sperm whales met off the coast of Sri Lanka to socialize for a few days, rubbing against each other to remove dead skin.

Caco, a 9-year-old western lowland gorilla in Odzala National Park, in the Congo, relaxes while enjoying a breadfruit. The photographer Daniel Nelson was just 16 when he took this image, which earned him the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.

This whale shark swimming near the Maldives was inhaling a snack as a remora fish aimed to position itself on the shark's head.

This brown bear cub in Alaska's Lake Clark National Park just wanted to play and wrestle with its mother.

This tiny seahorse near Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, abandoned the seagrass it was holding when the tide came in bearing plastic and sewage — and grabbed onto this plastic-and-cotton raft.

14 brutal, beautiful images from this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest

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