Welcome to Fat Bear Week 2020! Katmai National Park and Preserve’s brown bears spent the summer gorging on 4,500-calorie salmon, and they've transformed into rotund giants, some over 1,000 pounds. The park is holding its annual playoff-like competition for the fattest of the fat bears (you can vote online between Sept. 30 and Oct. 6). Mashable will be following all the ursine activity.
Bear 747's time has arrived.
For half a decade, 747 has been one of the biggest bears at Katmai National Park and Preserve's salmon-rich Brooks River. But other impressively fat bears have continually beat him in the annual Fat Bear Week contest. And indeed, bears like Holly (bear 435) deserved the prize.
But this year, voters agreed that 747 — a bear who certainly grew into a mundane number assigned by park biologists years ago — wasn't just the biggest. He was also the fattest, and they have crowned him the 2020 Fat Bear Week champion.
"He's the fattest and largest bear I've ever seen," Mike Fitz, a former Katmai park ranger and currently a resident naturalist for explore.org, told Mashable. "I feel a special bit of privilege to witness a bear as big as he."
In 2018, rangers were equally impressed. "He seems to be more hippopotamus than bear at times," said Andrew Lavalle, a park ranger at Katmai at the time. Lavalle noted 747's belly nearly dragged on the ground.
This year, 747 is even fatter. He, like all of the Brooks River bears, benefited from a record-breaking run of salmon into the park. This means the normally fat bears are fatter than usual. Even mothers with cubs, who must share fish with their helpless offspring, are quite rotund, explained Naomi Boak, the media ranger at Katmai National Park and Preserve.
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Bear 747 bested bear 32, aka "Chunk," in this year's Fat Bear Week finals. Chunk is one of the biggest bears of the Brooks River, with notably large hindquarters, according to explore.org, the nature livestreamers who run the bear cams. In the coming years, Chunk may be a Fat Bear Week champion, too.
Fat Bear Week, while a lighthearted contest, is really a celebration of brown bears thriving in an untrammeled ecosystem. This is nature achieving its full potential. It's the result of protecting oceans, rivers, and land. In Katmai, the salmon flourish, and so do the bears.
"He's the fattest and largest bear I've ever seen."
Bear 747 is in the prime of his life. He's around 20 years old, is excellent at catching bounties of fish, and as a large dominant bear earns some of the most productive fishing spots in the Brooks River. (Only one other bear, formidable bear 856, is more dominant than 747.)
Bear 747 will likely be back next year, as will bear 32. They'll almost certainly be competitors in remote Katmai again, where just one bear is crowned a Fat Bear Week winner, but all the fat bears are truly champions.
Topics Animals
