Each year the conservation organisation Forest and Bird asks people to vote for New Zealand’s Bird of Year. This year the organisers included the long tailed bat in the list of candidates. The bat received 7,031 out of 56,733 votes, putting it almost 3,000 votes ahead of the next most popular choice, the kakapo.
The decision to include the bat was described as an “apparent defiance of the laws of scientific taxonomy” by BBC News, and the result sparked outrage amongst bird lovers from all over the world. However, we commend Forest and Bird for using the same classification system used in the Law of Moses, which includes the bat in a list of birds the Israelites were forbidden to eat. See Leviticus 11:13-20, Deuteronomy 14:12-19.
References and Links: BBC News and Stuff NZ 1 November 2021, Reuters 2 November 2021
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