mabelmoments:

Hungarian photographer Bence Máté has won this year’s Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year title with this picture of leaf-cutter ants in a Costa Rican rainforest. The variation in the size of the pieces they cut was fascinating - sometimes small ants seemed to carry huge bits, bigger ones just small pieces. Of his winning shot, he says: “I love the contrast between the simplicity of the shot itself and the complexity of the behaviour.” Lying on the ground to take the shot, he also discovered the behaviour of chiggers (skin-digesting mite larvae), which covered him in bites

Picture: Bence Máté / Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2010