Online voting Halloween bat beauty contest

With the online competition, a US authority wants to highlight the importance of bats. It is possible that a specimen named Hoary Potter will prevail in this year's edition.

Shortly before Halloween, a beauty contest for bats has begun in the USA. The US Bureau of Land Management publishes photos of bats on Facebook and Instagram for the annual event. Users then have the opportunity to vote on which of the specimens is the cutest.

The participants in the competition belong to bats that live in the wild on public land. They are photographed by employees of the authority. On October 31, Halloween, it will be announced which animal has won.

With the beauty contest, which has been running since 2019, the authority wants to draw attention to the importance of bats for the environment. The competition coincides with Bat Week, during which bat experts offer information events about the flying mammals.

"Sir Flaps-A-Lot" competes against "Hoary Potter"

The first round of voting pitted a Townsend's long-eared bat called Sir Flaps-A-Lot against a Hoary bat called Hoary Potter. Sir Flaps-A-Lot comes from the US state of Utah, Hoary Potter from Oregon.

According to the authorities, an important characteristic of Townsend's long-eared bats is their huge ears, which can be up to 38 millimetres long. According to the Bureau of Land Management on Facebook, the ears help regulate temperature.

Hoary bats are characterized by fast flight and by wrapping themselves in their own tails to disguise themselves as leaves as protection from predators.

Emma Busk from the agency said that bats around the world play an important role in the environment by feeding on insects and pollinating flowers and fruit. However, they are increasingly at risk from habitat loss, disease and too much light in the environment.

Low disease transmission to humans

Bats are often wrongly regarded as scary disease carriers. "There is a lot of fear and misunderstanding about bats," Busk pointed out. People often associate bats with rabies. "But less than one percent of all bat populations are actually infected with rabies and disease transmission from bats to humans is actually very low."

Busk has a favorite in the beauty pageant: Hoary Potter, the bat she personally photographed. She hopes that a bat from Oregon will win for the third time. Last year's winner was a female Townsend's long-eared bat named William ShakespEAR from Oregon. This bat was also photographed by Busk.