It’s #BatWeek & Halloween involves costumes, so here’s a thread of vintage women’s bat costumes, ranging from the late-1800s to the mid-1900s, that have frustratingly little information! We shall have to settle for admiring.
The Batbershop Quartet welcomes you! Come! 🦇✨
The pattern is easy to identify
Bat on the head
Wings under the arms
The occasional bat on the chest (this is less of a costume and more of an elegant gown, but who’s complaining?)
Here we have this proto-Batgirl and I can’t help but wonder if it inspired the Batsuit design?
Bat but make it sultry
Bat but make it child
Okay, back to sultry bat
The ✨elegance✨
This was for a ballet (I’m sure some of the others likely are as well) or a BATllet
…why do I do this?
Yes I deserve that glare, Flapper Bat. I accept.
Let’s round this thread out with some vintage instructions on how to make your own bat costume!
Got an old bumbershoot just lying about? Chop it up, whip out the long underwear and sewing kit, Fred’s your uncle and BAM
“How is white and yellow perfect for hiding it in a green leaf?” So glad you’re here to ask the important questions. When light filters through the Heliconia, it casts a green hue over the bats’ white fur
giving it a green appearance and the ears and nose leaves look like yellowing bits of leaf. When a predator looks up from below, it is likely that all they will see is a sad, droopy bit of foliage!
Have you ever heard the tale of Samoan Princess-turned-goddess Leutogi?
If not, then read on to discover the answer!! 1/
[🎨 Yuki Kihara, Tonumaipe'a; How She Was Saved by the Bats (2004)]
Princess Leutgitupa’itea - also called Leutogi - was born of royal Samoan blood in a time when Samoa and Tonga warred with one another. 2/
In an effort to forge a bond of peace with Tonga and put an end to the shedding of blood, the King of Samoa offered his daughter, Princess Leutogi, to be the second wife of the Tongan king. 3/
THE SKY LIONS ARE FALLING, THE SKY LIONS ARE FALLING
The total number of Hoary bats in NA is on a trajectory to be cut in half in the next 7 years if we don't implement solutions in the wind energy industry
IF (and that's a big "if") I've understood this correctly, and depending on true population size, there's a chance that we could see the Hoary bat go extinct in our lifetime, possibly even by 2050
“Worldwide, cats kill an estimated 250,000 bats per year. Domestic cats who do not need bats for nutrition will hunt them for sport: since cats can hear their echolocation calls, they must make a tantalizing squeaky toy.
“Unfortunately, feline fun wounds bats so badly that they either die or fall victim to secondary predators, such as foxes in the UK. Feral cats hunt bats for food, as evidenced by a cat trapped and killed in rural New Zealand in 2010.
“Over seven days this cat had killed a total of 102 short-tailed bats, a species listed as ‘vulnerable’. The euthanized cat was pictured lying next to the depredated remains of some of the bats it didn’t quite manage to digest.