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It’s time to cast your vote in an important and batty election–the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Bat Beauty Contest. In commemoration of Bat Week (October 24-31), the bureau will post photos of bats on their Facebook and Instagram accounts and ask you to vote for the best-looking one. All of the bats are part of wild populations that live on land managed by the public agency and are photographed by wildlife technicians.
[Related: Scientists are confounded by the sex lives of serontine bats.]
Round 2 begins today, featuring a match-up between a hoary bat named Hoary Potter and a long-eared myotis named Honey Bunches of MyOtis. This week’s upcoming contests will feature the last week’s winners, who will be announced in the coming days. The first round also saw a Hollywood themed match-up between a myotis bat named Robert Battinson squaring off against western small-footed bat, Batt Damon. Baylor Swift and Lestat, both western small-footed bats, also met up in what the BLM called the “match-up of the century.”
The event is more than just a spooky alternative to Fat Bear Week. It’s meant to raise awareness about the planet’s only flying mammal. There are over 1,400 species of bats, or almost 20 percent of all mammal species. They also can be found almost everywhere on Earth, even in desert and polar regions. You can use Bat Week’s state bat database to look up what bat species live near you.
Bats play a critical ecological role as plant pollinators and through eating insects that can threaten crops and forests around the world. According to Bat Week, one bat can eat up to its body weight in insects every night. Only three species of bats eat animal blood, with two specializing on bird blood. Other bats eat pollen, nectar, or fruit.
“There’s a lot of fear and misconceptions around bats,” Bureau of Land Management wildlife technician Emma Busk told the Associated Press. “But less than 1% of all bat populations actually carry rabies, and the bat-to-human disease transmission is actually really low.”
The Bat Beauty Contest will continue throughout this week with the winner announced on Thursday October 31.
