Pictured above: Fat Bear Week Winner. Photo courtesy of Flickr.
By Margaret Connor ’23
Copy Editor
The bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve are celebrities in their own right, with their antics broadcasted on explore.org’s Facebook page. Trail cameras throughout the park capture the wild world of these Alaskan Peninsula brown bears. While most bears are only identified by their unique identification number, a few bears, like 128 Grazer, 435 Holly and 32 Chunk have nicknames. Despite not having a nickname, ursine giants like 747 drew an online fanbase as they amassed their winter fat stores.
Every year, beginning in late June, Katmai’s bears enter a biological state known as hyperphagia. Hyperphagia prevents the bears from feeling satiated, thereby encouraging them to eat massive quantities of food to store up enough energy to last through the cold months. One of these foods is salmon, which the bears fish for at waterfalls.
Fat Bear Week is an annual event hosted by explore.org, Katmai Conservancy and Katmai National Park and Preserve. During Fat Bear Week, members of the public vote between two matched-up bears until only the fattest bear remains. Voting is done online through the explore.org website. Fat Bear Week is a single-elimination March Madness-style tournament. The site displays two photos of each bear: one from the summer before they put on weight and a recent photo from the beginning of fall showcasing the bears’ increased body mass.
This year, Fat Bear Week ran from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, when the public cast their final votes in a 12-bear showdown. The finalists were 747 and 32 Chunk.
Both are adult male bears who occupy places at the top of the bear hierarchy, determining access to resources like salmon-fishing grounds. Positions on the hierarchy are challenged and maintained via physical confrontation, meaning that larger bears have the advantage in fights. However, according to explore.com’s “Meet the Bears of Fat Bear Week” page, “747 typically keeps his status by sheer size alone. Most bears recognize they cannot compete with him physically.”
In final elimination rounds, 747 faced many valiant competitors, including 2019 champion “Queen of Corpulence” 435 Holly, two-time champion 480 Otis and seven-litter mother 402.
Indeed, 747 was crowned the champion of Fat Bear Week 2020, defeating 32 Chunk in the voting by 47,055 to 21,854. The 2020 runner-up 32 Chunk defeated 435 Holly in the semifinals, receiving over 30,000 votes.
Though a dominant male who is “not hesitant to displace others from the resources he wants,” 747 has recently revealed a more sensitive side, playing with other bears and waiting his turn to scavenge fish.