Amid the flood of tributes to Ozzy Osbourne after his death at 76 this week, one has been met by a deluge of scathing backlash.

PETA, known for calling out celebrities over perceived cruelty to animals, recently praised Ozzy for showcasing ‘the gentle side he showed to animals.’

This commendation comes 43 years after the infamous event where Ozzy bit the head off a live bat during a Black Sabbath concert in Iowa, a moment that quickly became legendary in show business.

Ozzy later explained that he thought the bat was a rubber toy when a fan tossed it onto the stage and has spoken about his regret that the drunken act became a lasting part of his reputation.

He once ruefully observed: ‘Whatever else I do, my epitaph will be: “Born December 3, 1948. Died, whenever. And he bit the head off a bat.”‘

In light of the incident, PETA’s memorial tweet to Ozzy came in for blistering mockery from fans, one of whom joked that bats ‘would like a word.’

Amid the flood of tributes to Ozzy Osbourne after his death at 76 this week, one arrived from what may at first appear to be an unlikely source – PETA; Ozzy pictured in 2011 

‘How dare you! He killed a bat on stage by biting off it’s head! How do you support such things!?!?!?’ another X user exclaimed in the replies.

‘I honestly thought this was a satire account posting this,’ gasped a third, while a fourth posted a meme of a bat saying: ‘Are you kidding me?’

Some social media users reacted with hilarity, posting replies like: ‘RI-PETA’ and: ‘The person who wrote this post was born after the 80s.’ 

‘Don’t bats lives matter?’ demanded an X user, as another sarcastically wrote: ‘Be more like Ozzie, bite the heads off of live bats.’

‘I had to check this was not the Onion twice,’ admitted a fan, while another was left wondering: ‘Are you serious or is this about to lead to a bat controversy?’ 

PETA’s tribute made no mention of the bat incident at all, focusing instead on Ozzy’s animal rights activism in recent years, particularly a campaign he collaborated with the pressure group on in the early 2010s.

‘Ozzy Osbourne was a legend and a provocateur, but PETA will remember the “Prince of Darkness” most fondly for the gentle side he showed to animals – most recently cats, by using his fame to decry painful, crippling declawing mutilations,’ they said.

‘Ozzy may have been the singer, but his wife, Sharon, and his daughter, Kelly, were of one voice when it meant protecting animals. Ozzy will be missed by animal advocates the world over,’ the statement concluded.

The homage came 43 years after he bit the head off a live bat during a Black Sabbath concert in Iowa, a moment that passed instantly into showbiz history 

In light of the incident, PETA ‘s memorial tweet to Ozzy came in for blistering mockery from fans, one of whom joked that bats ‘would like a word’

PETA and Ozzy’s crusade against cat-declawing included a poster of the rocker with his fingertips severed, blood gushing down his hands.

‘Amputating a cat’s toes is twisted and wrong,’ Ozzy said at the time. ‘If your couch is more important to you than your cat’s health and happiness, you don’t deserve to have an animal! Get cats a scratching post – don’t mutilate them for life.’

Ozzy’s wife Sharon also worked with PETA on an anti-fur video and donated her personal collection of fur coats to the organization, while their daughter Kelly has posed for the outfit’s ‘Save the Seals’ initiative.

The musician’s PETA activism came near the end of a relationship with animals that markedly evolved over the course of his life. 

During his early years, Ozzy dropped out of school at the age of 15 and drifted between a string of odd jobs including one in a slaughterhouse.

After he became a rock star, he and Sharon owned a sprawling clowder of cats, but at the height of his addictions he massacred them in a drug-induced frenzy.

‘I was taking drugs so much I was a f***ed. The final straw came when I shot all our cats,’  he recalled later, placing the incident in the early 1980s.

‘We had about 17, and I went crazy and shot them all. My wife found me under the piano in a white suit – a shotgun in one hand and a knife in the other.’

PETA and Ozzy’s crusade against cat-declawing included a poster of the rocker with his fingertips severed, blood gushing down his hands

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) issued a warm statement in which they saluted Ozzy for ‘the gentle side he showed to animals’

In 1981, one year before the notorious bat incident, Ozzy also bit the head off a dove during a meeting with CBS, though various versions of the story contain conflicting accounts of whether the bird was alive at the time.

Ozzy told biographer Nick Wall that he had planned to bring three live doves to the meeting in order to release them there as a peace symbol.

Instead, having guzzled brandy all morning, he got so fed up of a chattering PR professional at CBS that he ‘pulled out one of these doves and bit its f***ing head off just to shut her up,’ he said for the book Black Sabbath: Symptoms of the Universe.

‘Then I did it again with the next dove, spitting the head out on the table,’ Ozzy added. ‘That’s when they threw me out. They said I’d never work for CBS again.’

His fauna-related antics during his drug years included snorting a trail of ants while on tour with Motley Crue and talking to a horse for an hour while under the influence of LSD, the latter episode prompting him to give up that particular substance. 

After he was jettisoned from Black Sabbath in 1979 over his spiraling addictions, he embarked on a 1981 solo tour and developed a habit of flinging ‘bits of meat and animal parts into the audience,’ Ozzy shared. ‘I thought it was hilarious.’

Members of the crowd responded by throwing back ‘sheep testicles, live snakes, dead rats, all kinds of things,’ he recalled. ‘Someone once threw a live frog onstage. It was the biggest frog I’d ever seen, and it landed on its back.’

He grew gentler in later life, and his affection for his pet cats was memorably documented on his hit reality show The Osbournes.

He grew gentler in later life, and his affection for his pet cats was memorably documented on his hit reality show The Osbournes

In one clip that repeatedly went viral in recent years, Ozzy was seen clambering up onto a dressing table to retrieve a cat that had scurried to the top of the mirror frame.

As members of his family shrieked in panic, he grew increasingly exasperated and started upbraiding them to ‘shut the f*** up’ and ‘stop screaming.’

He died this week surrounded by his loved ones after a years-long battle with Parkinson’s disease, eliciting a worldwide outpouring of grief.

Tributes abounded from fans and friends – and even from the Alamo, decades after he urinated on its cenotaph and was banned from the city of San Antonio before publicly apologizing and eventually revisiting the landmark in 2016.