On today, October 8th, the final round of voting for Fat Bear week will be taking place. You can cast your vote at the official Fat Bear Week voting page today between, 12-9PM EST (that’s 9AM-6PM Pacific time). Our two portly finalists are 32 Chunk and 128 Grazer, both pleasingly plumped and ready to carry home the virtual trophy, although seeing as they are bears and their fishing area is currently cordoned off by the park service to allow them to hunt in peace, they probably won’t ever know that they’ve scored top honors. Nonetheless, I’m sure they’d agree that being fat and ready for winter is prize enough.
Reader advisement: this story has mention of a violent bear fatality. If you think that might be too upsetting for your morning read, skip ahead two paragraphs.
In our header gif, we remember Fat Bear Week competitor and excellent mama, Bear 402. Bear 402 was the mother of at least eight litters and a fan favorite on bear cams set up for Fat Bear Week, a yearly competition where users view video captures of bears readying for hibernation in Katmai National Park in Alaska to vote on their favorite bulky bear. Bear 402 and adult male Bear 469 had been on live video fishing in the same area when, for reasons unknown, they started fighting, 469 drowning 402 and then hauling her body off, presumably for the purposes of eating her(!!), all witnessed by thousands of horrified viewers. Following the bear’s death last Monday morning, competition organizers postponed a live chat scheduled for the evening which was intended to reveal the winner of the day’s voting bracket. Regular voting resumed the following day and continued as scheduled for the final winning Fat Bear is reveal today, Tuesday, October 8th.
While scuffles between bears at the park are certainly not uncommon, they are usually brief and end with bears going their separate ways. Bear fights to the death, particularly those leading to cannibalistic predation between adults are far less frequent, but they do occur. Bears are, after all, opportunistic omnivores. Last Monday’s altercation was not the first bear death caught on camera this year: in the summer, 32 Chunk, considered the most dominant of the bears at the park’s Brooks River site, attacked a cub. While the cub survived the initial attack, he died a few days later. All of this is a reminder that even for apex predators, life can be brutal out there in the wild.
OK, back to nicer news, for those of you that skipped...
Bear 402, while never a winner of the Fat Bear competition, will be fondly remembered by bear cam devotees. She first came to the Brooks River with her mother, 209 Beauty, in the late 1990's and has returned to the river every year since. As an adult, she grew to one of the largest adult females of Brooks River and on her non-birthing years had been known for impressive pre-hibernation weight gains, making her a serious contest contender on those occasions. Few female bears have more than one or two litters of cubs in their lifetimes, but due to her overall health, fecundity and ability to nourish herself well in preparation for birthing, Bear 402 had at least eight. She was an excellent salmon consumer, both when angling for live fish at the falls of Brooks River and with her efficient scavenging of fish remains downstream. She was known as a protective mama bear, a reputation earned when she saved her cub Hedgie from dangerous currents and again from attacks by another adult another bear. While not all of her litters have survived, she has raised many offspring to independence and adulthood, some of whom still visit Brooks River. Perhaps one of them will be challengers for the Fat Bear crown in the future.
Gif images sourced from here:
National Park Service: Fat Bear Week
Special thanks to Wonkette regular Craig Nixon for his excellent editing help and for providing the gift link to the WaPo article.
Bear life is rough. Vale 402.
As a child I watched The Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday with my family. Sometimes they showed a Disney movie but sometimes they showed nature footage. I remember one particular one about a rabbit who got away from a predator, I think it was a mountain lion. As a child I believed that rabbit got away because they showed it running away on camera. As I grew older I realized that the rabbit probably did not get away and editing was used to give the clip a happy ending. Nature is wonderful but sometimes it is cruel. It is sad that 402 died but she was over 20 years old which is old for a wild bear. She had as good a life as can be expected for a wild bear so that is something to keep in mind. Thanks, Martini, for the gif of a happy time for her. Good luck to those fat bears!