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Desert Wildlife, Atacama Desert, Chile, 2003

Birds perch on a cactus as a gray fox warily stands below in Chile's Atacama Desert. Rain rarely falls on the Atacama's coastline, but dense fog known as camanchaca is abundant. The fog nourishes plant communities from cactuses to ferns.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "The Driest Place on Earth," August 2003, National Geographic magazine)

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Photograph by Joel Sartore

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Photographer: Joel Sartore

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