Photos: Best Wild Animal Selfies

Polar bear

(Image credit: Screen grab from Animal Planet, Discovery Channel)

Humans are not the only creatures getting in on the craze that has won "selfie" the title of Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries. Unbeknownst to them, wild animals have also picked up on the trend, albeit a bit less earnestly than their human counterparts. This polar bear sniffs out a camera that Animal Planet set up to observe the beasts in their natural environment.

Sea eagle

(Image credit: ABC Kimberley Broadcasting & Media Production)

This Australian sea eagle poses for a camera that it snatched from wildlife rangers trying to study crocodiles in Western Australia.

Penguin

(Image credit: Alex Cowan, G Adventures' M/S Expedition)

A Gentoo penguin poses for a camera that it snatched from the Canadian cruise ship M/S Expedition during a trip around Antarctica.

Persian leopard

A Persian leopard struts its stuff for a camera trap in Afghanistan's central highlands.

Pallas's cats

(Image credit: WWF/Wangchuck Centennial Park)

A Pallas's cat shyly captures a selfie in the Himalayas of Bhutan.

Snow leopard

This elusive snow leopard takes a calm look into a camera trap before it continues stalking through Tajikistan.

Black bear

(Image credit: Chris Wemmer/ Camera Trap Codger )

This bashful, or perhaps just clumsy, black bear grabs a camera trap and captures a selfie of its foot in California.

Laura Poppick is a contributing writer for Live Science, with a focus on earth and environmental news. Laura has a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Laura has a good eye for finding fossils in unlikely places, will pull over to examine sedimentary layers in highway roadcuts, and has gone swimming in the Arctic Ocean.