It may have taken some time to decide them, but the last votes have been cast and the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2008 has been chosen.  This extraordinary set of images certainly puts to rest the notion that the best pictures on the internet are always copyrighted by their owners.

Photo credit: T. Nathan Mundhenk (personal website)

4chan has animated gifs of a certain kind but the ones on Wikimedia are of a completely different ilk aka education. This amazing gif shows the transformation of the cicada from its pupa to the adult form. Although the whole process took over two hours there is a gap in the middle of about thirty minutes while the cicada took a rest from the strenuous activity of becoming an adult. Other than that gap the shots are at intervals of thirty seconds and this builds up beautifully in to a record of one insect's emergence.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.