Through a hole in an old Ford's smashed windscreen, a raccoon pokes her fuzzy grey head. The glass looks like an Elizabethan ruff around the small face that stares straight into the camera.

This charming image has been shortlisted for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) competition, which awards the most heart-warming and hair-raising snapshots of Earth's nine million animal species.

You can enjoy the rest of the winning images in our top Become An Expert link. They include:

A parasiticA life form that needs to live on a host to survive. "zombie fungus" bursting through the body of a beetle. Having overtaken its host, the fungus is ready to blow its spores into the wild to claim new victims.

Set against the dark depths of the Red Sea, a school of fish swirls in a hypnotic dance, preparing to choose their mates.

A cheetah, overrun by a pack of wild dogs, puts up a fierce stand. His teeth are bared. His dilated eyes glint with adrenaline. This is nature red in tooth and clawA quote from the poem In Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The phrase means using cruel tactics in battle or competition..

Why do these images have such power to pull us in - often more so than portraits of our own species?

According to Lewis Blackwell (author of The Life and Love of Cats and The Life and Love of Dogs), wildlife photography lets us involve ourselves in the stories of creatures that ordinarily feel so distant.

"A great photograph is one of the most immediate, emotionally connecting ways of getting people to think about a subject," he says.

For US journalist Michael Nichols, the answer is more simple. "The bottom line is humans like wildlife."

And, surely, he's on to something. Our fascination with animals is rooted in our infancy and early childhood. Animals, both wild and domestic, feature in countless children's stories, from Aesop's fables to Charlotte's WebA novel by E. B. White, about a pig who befriends a spider.. From our first gurgles, we are told that the cow goes "moo" and the duck goes "quack". Or, as the oldestThe book, entitled Orbis Sensualium Pictus, was originally published in Latin and German, in Nuremberg in 1658, and was quickly translated into English by Charles Hoole.-known English children's book explains: "the duck quacketh" and "the bear grumbleth".

We grow up learning to think of animals as our friends. In fact, two studies with hundreds of participants found that we find it easier to empathise with dogs in distress than with fellow humans.

And, of course, animals are the stuff of our entertainment. There are at least 2.5 billion cat videos on the internet, which have been watched more than 25 billion times.

We love animals so much because we yearn for their simplicity. We wish we could interact with the world on pure instinct - like they do - without awkwardness and self-doubt. Their lack of self-awareness gives them an innocence that means our love for them can be pure and uncomplicated.

But can we really animals? We are amused and entertained by them. We are fond of them. But real love is more profound and challenging, like your relationships with your family and friends. It is hard work and it is life's biggest reward. Love must be exchanged on equal terms: it can't simply be showered on fluffy creatures that look up to us as strange, towering aliens.