Thursday, Dec. 09, 2010
Tube-Nosed Fruit Bat
If it were a tiny bit less ugly it would be, well, just ugly. But the tube-nosed fruit bat, also hailing from Papua New Guinea, achieves the rare feat of being ugly-cute. Internet critter-lovers have been calling it Yoda, which is a fair enough comparison, except that Yoda doesn't fly through forests, pooping seeds from its fruit-based diet and helping new plants disperse and grow — or at least not in the first six films. Until he does, the fruit bat wins the award for being both cute and environmentally very useful.