ANT CHEATER!

Photographer won wildlife contest with ‘action shot’ ...of a STUFFED animal

WHEN you enter the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, you expect to face stiff opposition.

But not quite as stiff as the effort submitted by Marcio Cabral.

His picture, entitled The Night Raider, showed a giant anteater attacking a termite mound – a dramatic image duly judged best picture in the Animals in their Environment category.

Then someone smelt a rat and the truth emerged: The anteater in question was stuffed, its days of terrorising termites long gone.

Mr Cabral has now been stripped of his prestigious prize after an investigation by experts brought in by the Natural History Museum, which runs the contest.

The taxidermy- enhanced picture was taken in Brazil’s Emas National Park and entered into last year’s competition.

The museum said it had been contacted by anonymous sources who questioned the authenticity of the image.

An investigation examined high-resolution images of a stuffed anteater on display at a visitor centre at the Portao do Bandeira gate, one of the entrances to the national park, and compared it with the one in the winning image. Five mammal and taxidermy experts, working independently of each other, all concluded that the animal’s posture, its raised tufts of fur and patterns on the neck and head are too similar for the images to show two different anteaters.

The museum said it also considered the responses to questions put to Mr Cabral, who co-operated fully with the investigation and supplied images taken before and after the winning shot, none of which included the anteater.

The photographer, who is Brazilian, said he had no other shots of the animal because it fled after the camera flashes were fired.

He strongly denied the picture showed a taxidermy specimen and claimed there was a witness with him who could back him up.

In his caption, Mr Cabral said he had spent days waiting in the national park before a ‘giant anteater ambled out of the darkness ... just long enough’ for him to take the photo.

However, the Natural History Museum ruled the image broke competition rules, which require entrants not to deceive the viewer or attempt to disguise or misrepresent the reality of nature. Roz Kidman Cox, a member of the 2017 judging panel and current chairman, said: ‘I find it disheartening and surprising that a photographer would go to such lengths to deceive the competition and its worldwide following.

‘This disqualification should remind entrants that any transgression of the rules and spirit of the competition will eventually be found out.’

The museum said it cannot name a new winner as the contest must be judged blind. Now the other finalists’ names have been revealed, an objective decision would be impossible, it said.

Mr Cabral, who has been banned from entering again, said he would contest the decision to exclude him. He told the BBC he intends to return to the Emas park later this year to collect evidence he believes will exonerate him.

Giant anteaters, which can grow as long as 7ft, are gravely endangered, with only 5,000 left in the wild and 90 in zoos. This has made it increasingly difficult for photographers to capture them in their natural habitat.

Mr Cabral is not the first entrant to be disqualified from the competition in recent years – in 2009 the overall winner had his prize withdrawn after judges ruled that a wolf photographed jumping over a gate was probably a trained ‘animal model’.