The Award for Best Comedy Wildlife Photo Goes to… | Tom Sullam | TED

I'd like to introduce you to this comedy wildlife competition. Now no one’s day will ever be as chill as that of a raccoon. Indeed, life throws bad days at all of us. And sometimes things can get worse. You can wake up with a bad hair day. (Laughter) 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, ways we might have expected, and then these ways. (Laughter) But we began to appreciate the qualities and charm of these animals, and we began to put pictures together that told a story. They can fly, which everyone knows, and everyone knows that cheetahs are the fastest mammal on the land, but no one knows they're terrified of being caught speeding. (Laughter) While we're on the subject of speed, woodpeckers make a rather unexpected appearance because they believe they're the fastest birds. They're not. But as we know in life, self-belief is about 95 percent of the job. (Laughter) Away from the speed merchants, you've got the sport jocks who maybe go out for a round of golf or not, depending on the round. (Laughter) Then you've got your left brains, the creatives, the ones that maybe focus more on their music, air guitar in the wild. (Laughter) And then maybe like dancing as if nobody was watching. (Laughter) Beyond that, you have the superheroes, the ones that influence the Marvel Comics. The Jedi squirrel, the most powerful Jedi in the world. He controls all the nuts. And then, probably even more frighteningly, you have the animal that can become completely invisible in any habitat. (Laughter) 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. This could be you and your best friend laughing till you cry, but it could also just be a very casual backhanded slap. It depends how you see it. (Laughter) And this? Well, this might be the morning after the night before. Exam time, could be anything. We started to see some more similarities as we looked at these pictures. This is the same family row that we all have. And within these families, you have partnerships with mature and intelligent adults who talk and understand each other. (Laughter) And those partnerships are normally made up of a talker... and maybe a listener. (Laughter) The children also seem to show similarities to us humans. They need little or no supervision. (Laughter) They share without being asked, which is lovely. And fortunately they never, ever squabble. (Laughter) And then you have the teenage years. Well, the teenage years, they do the same thing. They have no awareness whatsoever. (Laughter) They have the very, very common traits of the staying-in-bed-all-day illness. Audience: Aww! TS: And then the even more common trait of too much screen time. (Laughter) 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. (Laughter) Someone said, duck smoking quack, which I love. (Laughter and applause) But if you put a camera on these guys, they react like all of us. They love it. (Laughter) And if they love it that much, they start doing photo bombs even when you don't expect it. (Laughter) But at the end of the day, they stay friends and they come together for the most brutal of all things -- the family portrait session. (Laughter) Comedy Wildlife, our organization -- that's the three of us there, you'll recognize me on the left. (Laughter) 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 that we're slightly different to everyone else. Actually, the success of the competition, the pictures have to be funny. Fortunately, life is filled with these moments just waiting to be captured. This is our 10th year, and each year we get tens of thousands more entries, unbelievably, and they get 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. This young lion would discover what a decisive moment could also mean. (Laughter) But as I said at the beginning, life is not all good. We have our bad days. That's my favorite. Audience: Aww. TS: 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. Our culture over the years has grown to create a divide between us and wildlife. 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 behavioral change. 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, we may have to be honest with ourselves and accept that some species may already have had enough of us. Thank you. (Laughter) Thank you very much. (Applause)