Fat Bear Week is returning this month for its 11th year. The competition is fierce and, above all, incredibly chunky.
The National Park Service’s competition for the bear with “peak spherical status” in Katmai National Park, Alaska, takes place from September 23 to 30.
A dozen Alaskan brown bears compete for the title, although there is no actual prize. Fans can vote for their favorite fat bears online on Explore.org every day of the competition between 12 p.m. and 9 p.m. EDT.
“From tubby titans to gargantuan gluttons, get ready to cheer for the heftiest bears in Katmai National Park and Preserve’s Brooks River!” park officials wrote in a post on social media.
Last year, the bear known as “Grazer 128” bested 1,200-pound “32 Chunk,” becoming the first Fat Bear Week competitor to win the tournament while caring for a cub.
It’s unknown just how much Grazer 128 weighs, but the bears can reach up to around 1,200 pounds by the late summer and fall. Adult females are smaller than males by as much as 50 percent. Scientists only make educated guesses about the competitors’ weight because they don’t want to disturb the animals.
Alaska brown bears pack on the pounds to survive the upcoming winter. By November, they enter a den to hibernate where they will not eat or drink until the spring, losing up to a third of their body weight in the process. Survival depends on eating a year's worth of food in six months and they can gain as many as four pounds a day.
Approximately 2,200 brown bears live in the park, which is also home to moose, wolves, and bald eagles.
This year, rangers are still deciding which bears will make the cut. But when the competition starts, eight live cameras are set up to watch the bears, including two at the falls and an underwater salmon camera. Bears gather at the park’s Brooks River to fish for sockeye salmon until late October.
Fat Bear Week started in 2014 thanks to Mike Fitz, a former ranger at the four-million-acre park. Back then, the event just took place over the course of the day.
It was so well-received that the competition has expanded. There’s now a competition for younger bears.
As a “chubby cubby appetizer,” the Fat Bear Junior competition will be held from September 18 to 19. The smaller bracket gives younger competitors the chance to advance to the main event.
“There are very few places in the world where you can go watch wild bears and know them as individuals,” Fitz told The New York Times last fall. The contest, he said, “celebrates the success of brown bears and it tells their stories — the challenges and the difficulties they face to get fat and survive.”
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