A falcon swoops down to pluck a butterfly from the sky. A baby macaque monkey sleeps in the arms of its mother. An army of wood ants overwhelms a blue beetle.

These are some of the stunning award-winning images in this year's Natural History Museum wildlife photographer of the year competition.

This year's overall winner shows a swarm of western toad tadpoles in Cedar Lake, Canada: hundreds of toads in larvalRelating to a form of an insect or an animal such as a frog that has left its egg but is not yet completely developed. form gliding through the water.

The photograph is also a glimpse into one of nature's most vitalVery important. systems: the swarm. Swarms are groups of animals that seem to know how to act and move together, in the absence of a central, guiding intelligence.

Understanding swarms is transforming science. They can be applied to everything from traffic jams to infections. And they may be vital for AI, creating complicated systems that run without human involvement.

But teaching machines to run without human control might be dangerous. If dronesDrones are aircraft flown with no humans on board. They are used for many different purposes. could operate without people, for example, they might cause terrible destruction.

Is swarm intelligence the key to our future?

Yes! Understanding animal swarms could allow us to create super-intelligent machines.

No! Group intelligence is a moral as well as a technical question. Armies of weapons operating without human control sound like a science fiction nightmare.

Larval - Relating to a form of an insect or an animal such as a frog that has left its egg but is not yet completely developed.

Vital - Very important.

Drones - Drones are aircraft flown with no humans on board. They are used for many different purposes.