Who's the Most Gorgeous Bat Around? You Decide

Move over, Fat Bear Week. A bat beauty contest is now stepping up to the plate. The Bureau of Land Management has hosted the online competition since 2019 to raise awareness about the animal's ecological importance. The federal agency posts photos of bats on its Facebook and Instagram accounts, then asks people to vote for the cutest one, per the AP. The bats are part of wild populations living on public lands and are photographed by agency staff. The first round of voting began Thursday and pitted a Townsend's big-eared bat named Sir Flaps-A-Lot, from Utah, against a hoary bat fittingly named Hoary Potter, from Oregon. The contest coincides with the start of Bat Week, during which bat experts across the country and the world hold educational events celebrating the only flying mammal.

Emma Busk, the BLM wildlife technician who photographed Hoary Potter, said bats around the world play a key role in the environment by eating insects and pollinating flowers and fruits. But they're increasingly facing the threats of habitat loss, disease, and light pollution, and they're often misunderstood as scary disease carriers, she said. "There's a lot of fear and misconceptions around bats," she said, noting that people often associate rabies with the animal. "But less than 1% of all bat populations actually carry rabies, and the bat-to-human disease transmission is actually really low."

Busk is rooting for Hoary Potter in the hopes that an Oregon bat will win the beauty contest for a third time. Last year, William ShakespEAR, a female Townsend's big-eared bat from southern Oregon whom Busk also photographed, claimed the crown. And in 2022, a canyon bat named Barbara, similarly hailing from southern Oregon, was declared the winner. "Our effort every year is to just collect as much data as we can on the species in our resource area, so that we do know how to better protect them moving forward," Busk said. The beauty contest will continue in rounds over the next week. It's timed to wrap up on Halloween next Thursday, when the winner will be announced.

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