It’s time to vote in an important moment and stupid election – the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Bat beauty pageant. In commemoration of Bat Week (October 24-31), the office will post photos of bats on their Facebook And Instagram accounts and asks you to vote for the most beautiful. All bats are part of wild populations that live on land managed by the public agency and are photographed by wildlife technicians.

(Related: Scientists are baffled by the sex lives of seraine bats.)

Round 2 starts todayfeaturing a confrontation between a hoary bat named Hoary Potter and a long-eared myotis named Honey Bunches of MyOtis. This week’s upcoming contests will feature last week’s winners, who will be announced in the coming days. The first round also saw a Hollywood-themed match between a myotis bat named Robert Battinson taking on a small-footed western bat, Batt Damon. Baylor Swift and Lestat, both western short-footed bats, also met in what the BLM dubbed it the “match of the century.”

The event is more than just a scary alternative to Fat Bear Week. It’s about raising awareness about the planet’s problem alone. flying mammal. There are more than 1,400 species of bats, almost 20% of all mammal species. They are also found almost everywhere on Earth, even in desert and polar regions. You can use Bat Week National Bat Database to find out which species of bats live near you.

Bats play an essential ecological role plant pollinators and eating insects that can threaten crops and forests around the world. According to Bat Weeka bat can eat up to its body weight in insects each night. Only three species of bats feed on animal blood, two of which specialize in bird blood. Other bats eat pollen, nectar or fruit.

“There’s a lot of fear and misconceptions around bats,” says a Bureau of Land Management wildlife technician. Emma Busk told Associated Press. “But less than 1% of all bat populations actually carry rabies, and transmission of the disease between bats and humans is actually very low.”

The Bat Beauty competition will continue throughout this week and the winner will be announced on Thursday October 31st.