Fat Bear Week Continues AfterBear-on-Bear Violence

Fat Bear Week, an annual eating contest for Alaska’s brown bears in Katmai National Park, opened a day late this week when one female participant was killed in a brutal fight with a male. Livestream cameras captured the carnage.

“National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also the harsh realities,” park spokesperson Matt Johnson said in a statement. “Each bear seen on the webcams is competing with others to survive.”

The contest, now in its 10th year, centers on 12 of the 2,200 brown bears gorging on sockeye salmon in the park’s Brooks River. Webcams monitor the buffet while viewers are encouraged to vote for “the bear you believe best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears,” according to the contest website. After a week of voting, a winner emerges.

(Yes, we know you are wondering if the victim bear got eaten. Seems her killer dragged her off to a “food cache” but then another bear “took over the carcass.”)

The bears are feasting on fish in anticipation of the long winter hibernation, when they’ll live off all that fat. Adult male brown bears — each packing away as many as 30 fish per day — can weigh well over 1,000 pounds by the end of the buffet. Females are about one-third smaller.

The nonprofit explore.org, which helps organize Fat Bear Week, this week hosted a live conversation about the death, but park rangers said it wasn’t known why the bears were fighting in the first place. 

“We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real,” said naturalist Mike Fitz. “The risks that they face are real. Their lives can be hard, and their deaths can be painful.”

Indeed. In July another male was caught on camera killing a cub that slipped over a waterfall. Enjoy the show.

Photo credit: National Park Service