Take a look at these epic micro photos!
- Published
The winners of this year's Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition have been announced.
The competition, which is now in its 51st year, celebrates images capturing life through the lens of a microscope.
There were thousands of entries submitted from all across the world.
Here are some of the winning photos.
The overall winner of the 2025 competition was Zhang You from China who impressed the judges with this incredible photo of a rice weevil, which is a tiny insect pest, sitting on a grain of rice.
The insect's wings are dramatically extended, making for a very striking image.
Although the photographer has seen rice weevils before, they said this was the first time they'd spotted one with its wings out.
Second place went to Dr Jan Rosenboom whose photo captures tiny green algae cells in a drop of water.
How vibrant is that green colour!
The third place winner is John-Oliver Dum for his photo.
It shows yellow pollen trapped in a web of a garden spider.
This blue and purple burst is another colourful entry was this photo
It shows the magnified spores of Ceratopteris richardii which is a type of fern species.
This captivating photo shows sensory neurons, which are nerve cells that carry important information about changes happening around us to our central nervous system.
This slightly creepy looking image may resemble an insect or strange creature, but it's actually of photo of sunflower trichomes.
These are small plant hairs found on the surface of the plant.
This photo captures heart muscle cells showing condensed chromosomes in a stage of the cell cycle called metaphase.
Metaphase is a stage during the process of cell division.
This fasincating image was snapped in Ecuador.
It shows parasitic fungus on a metallic coloured fly.