Forget pumpkin carving and trick or treating – the most important event of spooky season has just arrived, and it’s chock full of big wings, big ears, and some absolutely glorious puns. It’s time for the 2024 Bat Beauty Contest.

If you’re unfamiliar, the Bat Beauty Contest is an annual online competition run by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), featuring photos taken of bats on BLM land across the country. These photos are then posted to Instagram and Facebook, and the public is asked to vote for the cutest bat of them all.

While this year’s contestants are certainly adorably fuzzy, it’s not always their cuteness that captures the public’s eye – some of their names are just too iconic to be ignored. 

There are the slightly more obvious ones, like Lestat, a western small-footed myotis bat named after the antihero vampire, but also the just plain punny. There’s Bats So Raven, the Townsend’s big-eared bat; and, in honor of the man with links to both Forks and Gotham, myotis bat Robert Battinson.

Voting for the competition – which is now in its fifth year – commenced on October 24 and will continue through to October 31. It’ll soon be heading into its second round, where the winners of the first round will go head-to-head for a chance at the sash and tiara.

There’s more than one point to the competition, though. While Halloween might be the perfect excuse for a bat-themed competition, it’s also a good time to bring awareness to the important role that bats play within their ecosystems – they do get something of a bad rap, after all.

“There’s a lot of fear and misconceptions around bats,” Emma Busk, a BLM wildlife technician told AP. They’re often seen as a scapegoat for the spread of disease, not just with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, but also the long-held belief that all bats have rabies – which is actually a myth. 

“[L]ess than 1% of all bat populations actually carry rabies, and the bat-to-human disease transmission is actually really low,” said Busk.

It’s also hoped that the competition will help to shine a light on the issues that bats are facing – which range from habitat loss and hunting to climate change – particularly as we know a lot less about the population status of many bat species compared to other mammals and birds. 

As well as casting their votes in the competition, there are plenty of ways that the public can get actively involved with the protection of bats too.

“In your own backyard, you can have a bat house!” said Busk in a statement last year. “It’s a shelter that helps protect bats during the winter. You can also make your garden more bat friendly by planting native flowers to attract insects and turning off any unnecessary lights. Light pollution is not great for bats.”