The southern curved winged bat ducked early in front of the dingo and kept its lead through fierce competition in the two days of intense mood! In the end, this critically endangered microbat triumphed in the competition with nearly 60% of the vote.
Applause for the southern bent bat!
Southern flexed-wing bats live in caves in southwestern Victoria and southeastern South Australia. This tiny cave-dwelling bat only reaches an average length of about 5 centimeters (including head and body) and weighs only 15 grams – that’s the same as a 50 cent coin!
Although they can see, they also use echolocation to hunt and navigate by sound, which is useful when catching flying insects such as mosquitoes and moths at night. In fact, the bats can fly more than 70 kilometers in just a few hours, and colonies can collectively eat hundreds of pounds of flying insects each night — many of which are agricultural pests.
By congregating in large numbers in one of their main nursery caves in the Naracoorte Caves World Heritage Area, they can transform the conditions in the cave nursery to make it more humid and up to 12° warmer. These changes are thought to aid in the development of the young — much like a humidifier for human babies.
Unfortunately, drought, widespread loss of foraging habitat, and disturbance or loss of caves are among several threats to this already critically endangered species. The best data available suggests that, if current survival rates continue, the total population could decline by as much as 97% in the coming decades.
Learn more about the southern curved-wing bat here.
Creating awareness for our more than 340 native mammal species
In 2022 alone, the conservation status of six native mammal species was upgraded from Vulnerable to Endangered or Endangered to Critically Endangered: three occurred just in the six weeks of our census.
“The vast majority of our native mammals are not found anywhere else on Earth. We really need to be more aware of the animals we have,” said Professor Euan Ritchie, a wildlife ecology and conservation researcher at Deakin University.
“When we know about a species, we care about them. And if we care about them, we want to help them and we want to give them that attention, that focus, the funding they deserve,” added Dr. Marissa Parrott, a reproductive biologist at Zoos Victoria.
“I think the part of competition that’s been so great is having conversations, talking about species that they may never have heard of. And that awareness and community support is really important to the trajectory of some of our endangered species,” said Dr. Emmi van Harten, coordinator of the Southern Bent-winged Bat National Recovery Team, Zoos Victoria.
“When you look at the amazing mammals profiled by Australian Mammal of the Year, each and every one of them deserves to win,” says Parrott.
Second, well done to the dingo!
In second place this year is the dingo. As Australia’s largest apex predator on land, dingoes play an important ecological role in ecosystems by suppressing wild cats, red foxes and the abundance of native herbivores and omnivores.
They are also highly variable in their size and appearance. While their brown fur is perhaps the most iconic, dingoes can also be black, black and tan, black and white, brindle, ginger, sable, white, or a patchy medley of colors.
Read more about the dingo here.
Rounding out the top 10:
- Mountain Pygmy Possum
- rakal
- Gilbert’s potoo
- Platypus
- dugong
- Eastern Striped Bandicoot
- northern quoll
- Southern brown bandicoot
Australian Mammal of the Year returns next year.
Thanks and gratitude go to the mammalian experts who contributed their time and expertise to write nearly 50 articles about our nominated mammal species for our website. These articles have been read over 100,000 times and distributed to regional news publications through our partnership with Australian Community Media.
Finally, thank you you readers and voters. You have traveled with us, learning, discovering and spreading the word about the competition and our incredible native mammals.
We can’t wait for next year.