Posted on 09/29/2021 10:43:31 AM PDT by SJackson
Finally, it's Fat Bear Week -- a most welcome week of healthy competition among brown bears.
Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve calls it "a celebration of success," a March Madness style tournament, complete with a bracket, where you can vote on the heftiest brown bear in the bunch.
The bears are getting ready to retire to their dens for the winter, without food or drink until spring. Their fat reserves sustain them as their body weight dwindles by up to a third.
"For bears, fat equals survival," says Katmai's website. Among this year's contenders: Chunk, one of the most dominant bears on Brooks River who exhibits some "enigmatic" behavior, and Holly, a medium-large adult female who was 2019's Fat Bear Week champion.
Voting takes place over several days on explore.org's website. You can also watch bears every day via LiveCam on the Brooks River in Katmai.
The contest dates back to 2014's Fat Bear Tuesday, according to the National Park Service, and has plumped up to an event with 640,000 votes cast in 2020, a year that cried out for fat bear fun.
There's not much to see bear-wise in the winter, but from June to September, visitors gather in Katmai to see brown bears feed on the area's abundant salmon.
A dominant adult male might catch and eat more than 30 fish a day, and by the end of the fall, adult males can weigh over 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms).
About 2,200 brown bears live in the park.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Last years winner, Chunk aka 32
A Wise old Owl once told me:
Better to be a Phat Bear, than being Phat & Bare!
Survival of the fattest!...................
Once they get chubby the salmon eggs and milt are eaten first, often not bothering with the carcass which the seagulls and crows appreciate.
The way the bears survive over the winter is miraculous ...
BUMP for later...
They ate Milt?
We were wondering why we haven’t heard from him.
Gen’ral Milley could hibernate for two years.
The bear pictured is estimated to weigh 1,400 pounds. The heaviest bear ever recorded was a polar bear shot in Alaska in 1960 that weighed 2,209 pounds. I cannot conceive how a bear could be 800 pounds heavier than the monster pictured.
Poor Milt
“Once they get chubby the salmon eggs and milt are eaten first, often not bothering with the carcass which the seagulls and crows appreciate.”
I thought the eggs and the skin was the most favored part. The skin is where the fat is.
Easy... just add a bit less then 1/2 a bear
A polar bear does have a little longer and little taller body than a brown bear so I guess there is some more room to spread the weight over but still that polar bear must have looked like a giant white bowling ball. The speculation was that the polar bear has probably found some beached whales and had gorged itself on blubber in order to put on that kind of weight.
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