By Tim Binnall
A competition to crown New Zealand's Bird of Year wound up with an unlikely winner in the form of a bat that 'flew away' with the title. The annual contest, reportedly organized by conservationist group Forest and Bird, aims to celebrate and raise awareness of the country's native avian species. This year's showdown, however, broke with sixteen years of tradition as, for the first time, organizers opted to also include a bat among the contestants.
The creature in question is the pekapeka-tou-roa or long-tailed bat, which Forest and Bird notes is one of New Zealand's only native land mammals and, unfortunately, is considered critically threatened. In light of its predicament, the organization included it in the annual contest in order to throw a proverbial spotlight on the animal that might otherwise go overlooked. "They face a lot of the same threats that our native birds do," Forest and Bird's Lissy Fehnker-Heather explained of the group's decision which she said had been "rattling around for a while."
As one might imagine, the inclusion of the long-tailed bat in New Zealand's prestigious Bird of the Year contest proved to be controversial with many denizens of social media immediately after it was announced. In another development that anyone familiar with the nature of online contests could have predicted, the interloper quickly became a favorite of those looking to upset the proverbial apple cart, much to the consternation of critics. When the final votes were tallied over the weekend, the long-tailed bat was crowned the Bird of the Year, having bested its closest competitor by 3,000 votes.