A fixture of every wildlife photographer's calendar, the Nature TTL Photographer of the Year 2022 awards saw snappers from across the world submit more than 8,000 images in the hopes of earning bragging rights and the £1,500 grand prize. This year's contest featured eight categories, ranging from 'Animal Behaviour' to 'Camera Traps' to 'The Night Sky', and entries included glittering glow worms, blood-soaked big cats and dazzling auroras. Here are the runners-up and winners.

If you ever thought foxes were just bin-raiding irritations, this intimate portrait by Matt Engelmann should help change your mind. He spent a month observing this dog fox and learning its movements, allowing him to catch this candid shot at the fox's favourite marking spot. The photo finished runner-up in the 'Wild Portraits' category.

Ravenously consuming a buffalo carcass between two other members of his pride, this massive male lion looked up from his meal just long enough to stare straight down Tomasz Szpila's camera lens. The photographer recalls instinctively shrinking into his seat with fear as he took the shot from the safety of his car. The photo earned top spot in the 'Wild Portraits' category.

This bug-eyed beauty is a micro-moth – a minuscule insect with a wingspan between eight and 10 millimetres – rendered by British photographer Tim Crabb by compiling focus-stacked images. Runner-up in the 'Small World' category, the little golden balls are pollen, accumulated from the flower of a creeping buttercup.

For this technical and artistic triumph, Tibor Litauszki used an LED headlight to track the moth's flight, illuminated the insect with a flash and then used multi-exposure settings to enhance the twilight mood. The 'Small World' category's winning image, the result is a work of other-worldly symmetry.

Few animals take parenthood as seriously as the eastern gobbleguts, photographed here by Australian photographer Talia Greis in Chowder Bay near Sydney. The female gobbleguts lays her eggs directly into the mouth of the male gobbleguts, who carries them in his jaws for around a month before they hatch. This doting father snagged the runner-up spot in the 'Underwater' category.

The Maldives has a well-earned reputation as one of the scuba diving capitals of the world thanks to its shallow seas, clear-blue waters and high density of vibrant marine life. Swiss photographer Andy Schmid was in the right place at the right time to take this 'Underwater' category-winning photo of a pink whipray splitting a school of bannerfish, sending them scattering.

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It doesn't matter how long you spend among the summits of the Himalayas, or how many local guides you hire – you will not see a sight like this with your own eyes. Even setting aside the hostility of their habitat, snow leopards are notoriously elusive, and Sascha Fonseca captured this image during a three-year camera trap project in Ladakh, India, earning himself runner-up spot in the 'Camera Traps' category.

No picture is worth staring down the snout of a full-grown grizzly in -15°C (5°F), so photographer Geoffrey Reynaud was at a safe distance when his camera trap captured this curious bear in Yukon territory, northern Canada. The bear is just starting to develop the layer of frozen fur that characterises Canadian grizzlies in midwinter. The image finished first in the 'Camera Traps' category.

Polish teenager Maksymilian Paczkowski scored this snap of a great crested grebe on his local pond just as the sun was in the latter stages of setting. A popular fishing spot, the bird was used to the presence of humans and its willingness to pose helped Paczkowski secure the runner-up spot in the under-16 category.

13-year-old Achintya Murthy from India snagged the under-16 trophy with this lovely little image of two Malabar parakeets in Hosanagara, Karnataka squabbling over a prime perching position. The birds normally mass in enormous numbers, so Murthy was pleased to pick out this intimate portrait from a nearby hide.

You probably wouldn't expect a wide colour palette in a category called 'The Night Sky'. Italian photographer Mauro Tronto visited Iceland's Godafoss waterfall at just the right moment to capture this strange confluence of light: the deep blue of the sky, the electric green of the aurora and the shimmering technicolour of a lunar rainbow.

You probably don't associate Australia with mountaintop huts shrouded in snow, but Frenchman Josselin Cornou took this image on a trip to Mount Kosciuszko, the highest point in mainland Australia, with the Milky Way galaxy slashed across the sky. The picture triumphed in the 'The Night Sky' category.

See the stunning images from the Travel Photographer of the Year 2021 awards

It might look like a scene from a supernatural horror movie, but the ethereal blue glow here comes from an enormous colony of glow worms that overran this disused train station in Helensburgh, Australia. It was lucky Josselin Cornou captured this 'Urban Wildlife' category runner-up image when he did, as just a day later the tunnel was flooded during a storm.

The winning picture in the 'Urban Wildlife' category, Jan Piecha's street lamp-lit shot shows a suburban hare crossing the road under cover of night.

An aerial shot of Iceland's Fagradalsfjall Volcano mid-eruption, the lava snakes slowly down the mountainside, as if painting two bright orange trees on a jet-black canvas. Finishing runner-up in the 'Landscapes' category for his troubles, photographer Marek Biegalski captured this image in the dying days of a six-month eruption, when the lava was looking particularly photogenic.

Iceland's currently erupting Fagradalsfjall and more spectacular volcanoes

A single sunflower stands unbowed in this powerful, 'Landscapes' category-winning image by South African photographer Bertus Hanekom, with a raging thunderstorm above and piles of broken bottles littering the sand below. This semi-arid region of the Karoo Desert is not hugely hospitable to plant life, and this fragile flower has beaten the odds to survive.

Michael Snedic came across this magnificent African elephant giving itself an extremely dusty blow-dry in Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater. After a good, long wallow in the crater's ample supply of mud, the elephant sucked up a huge trunkful of dust and grit and blasted itself squarely in the face. The image finished runner-up in the 'Animal Behaviour' category.

Crowned the contest's overall winner, this stunning shot shows a caracal slinking along the shore of Tanzania's Lake Ndutu with an unfortunate flamingo in its jaws. One eye glaring at the camera, the mud-flecked predator is barely larger than its prey, and relies on the element of surprise to bring down a big meal.

Now see the winners of the Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards