Happy Halloween! Bing celebrates Halloween with Vampire Bat

Bing says Happy Halloween by displaying a Vampire Bat on its home page.

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BING screengrab
Bing got into the spirit of Halloween today by featuring a Vampire Bat on its home page.

How do the most popular websites celebrate holidays -- like Halloween?

Check out Bing -- the latest search offering from Microsoft. They certainly got into the spirit today. While Google salutes the time-honored tradition of trick-or-treating, Bing goes for the spookier approach by displaying a giant, hanging bat on its home page.

No, not a bat like A-Rod's baseball bat (which has, incidentally, not been very scary at all thus far in the Series), but as in a Vampire Bat. You know, the bat that "vants to drink your blood."

Trick or Treat?

If you mouse over the bat or different parts of the festive black and orange display, you can find some interesting seasonal facts. Well, facts as in fiction (in some cases).

Like they point to a page discussing the legendary "Chupacabra" -- a newer type of monster in the same vein as Bigfoot, Yeti, or Nessie. Chupacabra means "goat sucker" and as you could probably surmise, the monster (which debuted in 1995) has a thing for goats.

Other parts of Bing's home page links to other terrifying things -- like dogs in Halloween costumes. But who are we to judge? We created a Halloween Dogs photo essay yesterday.

What's Halloween all about? No one explains the holiday better than Linus. So they link to a page honoring "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

What's the scoop on Count Dracula? Fact or fiction? They'll fill you in.

Everyone's doin' it

All in all, it's a fun way to acknowledge the holiday. And certainly Bing and Google aren't alone in displaying Halloween or spooky-themes or their sites today.

Yahoo does it too. But only on their new home page. If you haven't upgraded yet, you get the standard Yahoo logo. On their new site, you get a dancing troupe of familiar Halloween characters doing a Michael Jackson-like "Thriller" routine.

And don't forget YouTube. They've replaced their logo with three bats flying in front of a hazy full moon. And, as you would expect from the video-sharing website, there are plenty of spooky videos to enjoy.

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See related:

Google celebrates Halloween with trick or treat doodle

The origin of that terrible Monster Mash song

20 Halloween songs that are better than the Monster Mash

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