Photo of the Day 72

Fruit Bats at Dusk, Zambia, 2007

Photograph by Frans Lanting

Epauletted fruit bats speckle a saffron-colored sky at sunset in Zambia's Luangwa Valley. Millions of these bats come to roost in the valley's trees and feed off the explosion of fruits during the rainy season, when the Luangwa River overflows its banks and transforms the dry, dusty landscape into an emerald wildlife paradise.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Waiting for Thunder," May 2007, National Geographic magazine)