Shared Moment: Night Fight

Photographer Karin Leperi catches a duel between tent-making bats

Photograph by Karin Leperi
PhotoZone
Dec 01, 2018

WITH FANGS AND CLAWS BARED FOR BATTLE, two tent-making bats have a split-second duel as they swoop toward a banana flower for a sip of sweet nectar. Karin Leperi caught the rare shot (an Honorable Mention in our 2018 photo contest) while on a photography tour in Costa Rica, where her instructor had hung the nectar-sprayed flower and set up strobes to light the action. Though plagued by mosquitoes in the sweltering night, Leperi was “ecstatic” to get this frame. “To me it captures the beautiful symmetry and choreography of nature,” she says.

More from National Wildlife magazine and the National Wildlife Federation:

NWF Wildlife Guide: Bats »
How to Make Backyard Bats Feel at Home »
A Flight for Their Lives »
Ranger Rick's Bats »
See Last Issue's Shared Moment »

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