It’s almost Halloween. That means it’s time for a bat beauty pageant

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Move, Fat Bear Week. A bat beauty pageant is now on set.

The Bureau of Land Management is hosting the 2019 online competition to raise awareness of the animal ecological importance. The federal agency posts photos of bats on its Facebook and Instagram accounts and then asks people to vote for the cutest. The bats are part of the wild populations that live 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 bat named “Hoary Potter” from Oregon. The contest coincides with the start of Bat Week, during which bat experts from around the country and the world organize educational events celebrating the only flying mammal.

The defining feature of the Townsend’s big-eared bat is, unsurprisingly, its ears, which can reach 1.5 inches (38 millimeters) in length. The large ears channel sound into the ear canal, provide transport during flight and help regulate temperature, the Bureau of Land Management said in its Facebook post introducing the top two contestants.

Singing bats, meanwhile, are known for flying fast and wrapping their own tails to mimic leaves and hide from predators, the agency said. Due to this attribute, Hoary Potter was estimated to be “the perfect candidate for seeker on this year’s Quidditch team”, referring to the Harry Potter game played on flying broomsticks.

Neither species is federally listed as endangered. However, Oregon has placed them on its list of species in need of conservation attention, and Utah has done the same for the Townsend’s big-eared bat.

Emma Busk, the BLM technician who photographed Hoary Potter, said bats around the world play a key role in the environment, eating insects and pollinating flowers and fruit. But there are more and more facing threats of habitat loss, disease and light pollution and are often misunderstood as carriers of scary diseases, she said.

“There’s a lot of fear and misconceptions about bats,” she said, noting that people often associate rabies with the animal. “But less than 1 percent of all bat populations carry rabies, and transmission of the disease from bats to humans is actually very low.”

Busk supports Hoary Potter in hopes that an Oregon bat will win the beauty pageant for the third time. Last year, “William Shakespear,” a female Townsend’s big-eared bat from southern Oregon that 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 each year is to collect as much data as possible about the species in our resource area so we know how to better protect them going forward,” Busk said.

The beauty pageant will continue in rounds over the next week. It is scheduled to end on Halloween next Thursday, when the winner will be announced.