Bat lickers lick bats in bat cave, get caught

The National Park System is turning 100, and The Verge is celebrating with Wilderness Week: a look at the natural world, its freaky critters, and its future.

On March 16th, 2015, two hikers named Codey Foster and Dusten Ray Gill licked a tricolor bat in violation of federal law. The bat was hibernating in the Bowden Cave in West Virginia’s Monongahela Forest, remote enough that if the hikers had kept their bat-licking escapade to themselves, no one might ever have discovered the crime. Unfortunately for the duo, they also spray-painted their names on the cave wall and uploaded evidence of the crime to Facebook.

A local caving group discovered the graffiti two months later and forwarded the report along to the Forest Service,...