| 1 | The setting: Brooks Falls, Alaska |
Since 2010, an amazing phenomenon which only the internet has made possible has taken bear enthusiasts by storm. In Katmai National Park of Alaska, the same park where “grizzly man” Timothy Treadwell hung out, there is a section of the Brooks River called Brooks Falls which is exceptionally dense in salmon. It’s common to see 25 bears at once by these falls, a rarity for the solitary brown bear species. Every year, they converge to gorge on 35 salmon per day, in preparation for their winter hibernation where they won’t eat a morsel for 5 months. The grizzly bears of Brooks Falls can gain 3 pounds a day and 400 pounds in total.
For that reason, Brooks Falls has long been a popular tourist spot, and the bears are fairly tolerant of people. There have been superstar bears from every era, including “supermom” Holly since 2010, and Diver 001 from 1975 to 2002, famous for his old age (estimated to be 35) and rare skill in using the diving method of catching salmon. In 2010, things were taken to the next level with a 24/7 webcam by the Brooks Falls Wildlife Viewing Platform, active in the summer feeding season. Bear maniacs can watch the bears fish, fight, grow older and rear their cubs from the comfort of their own homes.
There was only one problem – where does bear watching go from here? How to take it to the next level? The answer was the fattest bear contest.
| 2 | Rules of the game |
The Fattest Bear Competition has been running since 2014. Anybody can take part, as it’s a simple popularity contest. It’s a voting tournament beginning with 12-16 bears where two contenders face off, before the fattest bear advances to the next round. Eventually, 2 fat bears are left, and the one with the most votes is crowned champion. It’s the same format as a tennis tournament, except with monstrously fat bears.
Taking part is easy, as the website displays a picture of the fat bear contender both before and after its summer season bulk up. There’s no need to monitor the webcams 24/7, although you’re perfectly free to do that. The Fattest Bear Competition is more popular than ever – as of 2020, 646,282 votes had been cast over its existence. Individual bears like Holly 435 and Otis are gaining wild fanbases, with the most hardcore fans dressing up as their favourite bears and posting the pictures on Twitter. Dozens of fanatics create their own campaign posters, such as a “winter is coming” poster with 480 Otis sitting righteously on an iron throne. By 2020, the competition had grown so popular that it moved from its facebook page to a website hosted by explore.org, a network of 150 wilderness webcams.
Part of the chaotic fun of the fat bear contest is that there’s no criteria. It’s not about which bear has gained the most subjective weight, it’s about who each individual bear enthusiast perceives as the fattest. People can decide that a bear is more deserving because she has two cubs to care for, had a limp the previous winter, or looks particularly cute and cuddly.
| 3 | Otis the heavyweight champion |
In the yearly Fattest Bear Competition, one contender is unquestionably the GOAT – 480 Otis. This 900 pound blob was first sighted in 2001 as a sub-adult, and since then, he’s become a three time champion. In 2014, he knocked out 410, a famous matriarch first seen in 1989 who may have made her last appearance in 2018 (fingers crossed she’ll be back). In 2016, he defeated 435 Holly, who later got her revenge in 2018, while in 2017, Otis sneaked past 747 to seal his place atop the throne of grizzly obesity. An idea for Bear Grylls to airlift a crown onto Otis’ head was scrapped for safety reasons.
By 2019, his weight was estimated to be 936 pounds. That’s in the range of a Kodiak bear, not a normal grizzly. Then again, Otis isn’t a normal grizzly, he’s a salmon gathering machine. His other claims to fame include the magic power of terrifying the other bears despite not being particularly aggressive. Otis commonly hogs the Jacuzzi, a salmon rich pool where bears can sit down and scoop up fish with ease.
By 2021 a debate had rolled around – was Otis losing his touch? He was 26 and getting on in years. He hadn’t won a “major” in three years and his teeth were looking noticeably ground down, which could have been affecting his food-gathering skills. Nevertheless, he was as fat and dominant as ever, and in 2021 he emerged as the Brooks Falls comeback king and reclaimed his fat bear crown.
| 4 | Holly the generous mother |
Holly 435 was a famous bear long before she won the competition. In 2014, she heartwarmingly adopted a 1 year old cub which had been abandoned by its mother, and had hidden up a tree for 24 hours. She even nursed him alongside her regular cubs. Holly was first sighted by the falls in 2001 as a sub-adult female and has been seen almost every year since, with the possible exception of 2004, meaning that as of 2021, she’s at least 22 years old.
Over her mothering career, Holly has given birth to 5 litters. Not to insult her children, but Holly 435’s finest hour arguably came in October 2019, when she won the title of fattest Brooks Falls bear by 12,000 votes, defeating 775 Lefty. This guy was an aggressive bully, arriving in 2015 and stealing fish from the shier female bears. Holly’s nickname was now officially the Queen of Corpulence.
The best proof of Holly’s fat supremacy is this video from September 2019, showing her sitting on a rocky island surrounded by glacous-winged gulls, looking just like a giant teddy bear. If you met Holly in the wild then your fate would be certain death, due to the irresistible urge to hug her.
No matter how much people feel they understand hibernation, the fat bear legions on Facebook still got a shock in June 2020 when Holly returned as a scraggly, much thinner bear, now with 1 cub in tow.
| 5 | Laser-guided scales |
2020 marked one change in the Fat Bear Survey – a more accurate weighing system. For the first time ever, all bear contenders from years gone by had a serious, though not 100% accurate, calculation of their weight. Katmai National Park employed the services of Terrestrial Laser Scanning Systems, which fires out laser beams that bounce and “echo” off an object.
It’s similar to the echolocation which bats use – the retuning signal is received by a scanner, which when fed into special computer software, can create a fully accurate image. Civil engineers use this technology to map projects and roadways, and the natural progression was obviously fat bears. It wasn’t necessarily intended for Brooks Falls, but with thousands of lasers, any animal target being mapped had to be stationary for 30 seconds. The Brooks Falls bears, stopping and fishing for salmon all day, were a gift for the project.
Now we can determine the weights of the fat bear competitors with no need for a giant set of scales. Here are the results for 5 bears that stood still for long enough.
- 32 Chunk – 1143 pounds.
- 480 Otis – 936 pounds.
- 151 Walker – 1188 pounds.
- 747 – 1408 pounds.
- 854 Divot – 676 pounds.
Otis was the three time winner (as of 2020), but surprisingly light, whereas 747 lived up to his bumper sized reputation. Competition founder Mike Fitz wasn’t surprised, having previously called 747 “the largest I’ve ever seen“. Even he underestimated 747’s monstrous mass, predicting 1200 pounds.
| 6 | The 2020 saga, part 1 |
The dawn of summer 2020 saw long dormant rivalries come to the surface. This year, Katmai National Park posted pictures of all the bears from July to October. The prize was there for any bear willing to take it, as the year’s salmon run had been exceptional. 4 million salmon had swam up Nanchek river to spawn, and of those, 20% had swam through Brooks River.
Fans logged on from all corners of the world. Holly was back, and now resembled the shape and colour of a toasted marshmallow. NPS announced 2020’s competition with a picture of Holly, saying “she is beauty and she’s grace, she stuffed so much salmon in her face”. She still had the gift of the gain, but from early summer, Holly entered an all out propaganda battle with 747, a 1400 pound jumbo jet who had spent the entire winter in his cave brooding over why he’d never won.
747 fans like Mike Fitz said he was robbed, while Holly’s cub tweeted several campaign posters in support of her mother saying “please vote for my mommy”. One image appeared of a real jumbo jet with a picture of 747 on its tip – nobody was sure if it was fake or whether 747’s salmon-fuelled energy had given him the power to teleport. But behind the scenes, 480 Otis was looking fairly blimpy too: could this old champion sneak in by the back door?
In July, Katmai National Park declared that 747 was already rotund enough for 6 months of hibernation, and by September, his belly was dragging along the ground. Plus, Holly had a new cub in 2020. She was looking fat, certainly, but now she had to find enough obesity fuel for two bears.
| 7 | The 2020 saga, part 2 |
Sure enough, there was a massive upset, as Holly didn’t even make it to the semi-finals. By 21,000 votes to 30,000 she lost to 24 Chunk, a 15 year old male with a scar above his eye and a way with the ladies, including older ones! Nevertheless, he had no intention of turning on the charm with Holly.
Ultimately, it came down to 747 versus 32 Chunk, and 747 won the day by 60,000 votes to 50,000. The crown was finally his! That said, there was a minor scandal when Otis and Holly snubbed his award ceremony. 747 has long been the most massive bear at Brooks Falls, only losing because of the competition’s subjective criteria. He isn’t very aggressive, but scares the other bears into submission simply by wandering into sight. 747 was first sighted in 2004 as a sub-adult, making him 19-21 years old. Mike Fitz shared a photo from those old days here. Believe it or not, the 747 number is purely coincidental. It is a random number assigned, and during 2004, the rangers were into the 700 series.
All evidence suggests that 747 is a proud father, as in 2015, he successfully courted with 120 Grazer, who emerged with 3 cubs in 2016. But better, 120 Grazier is a semi-finalist in the Fattest Bear Competition herself. She was defeated by 32 Chunk in 2020. Their cubs will undoubtedly be the chosen ones who rule the competition for decades to come.
| 8 | The propaganda war |
The imagination of the fattest bear enthusiasts knows no bounds. The self-appointed bear spokesmen have tried to sway people to their cause with memes, movie-style posters, and even poems. “Because he eats a lotamus, he’s practically a yachtamus” said one poem about 747. Another shows 747 standing purposefully in the river while a jumbo jet flies overhead and a bright shining moon looms in the background, 100 times its normal size. The feeling of fate and destiny in this picture is overwhelming. Eat your heart out advertising companies.
Other posters showed 747 sitting calmly in the river with a thought bubble saying “Thank you for your vote”, although these may well have been photographs – nobody is sure. Another shows 747 being hauled to Alaska by a cargo ship about to buckle under his gigaton weight. An image even emerged of a massive blimp flying over an Alaskan lake screaming at people to “vote 747”. Real or not? The truth is long since buried.
Some bears won the hearts and minds of the public with presidential style posters, like 747, who promised a salmon in every paw. Other posters simply ordered people to “vote for 747” with a yellow traffic exclamation mark – no point beating about the bush. “Vote for me, or I will lose… again”, said another poster for 747.
| 9 | The contest turns personal |
Think that this is all a remote contest on a laptop where the bears are totally oblivious? Think again! Holly and friends are clearly getting into the spirit of the competition, and like any sport, taking it a bit too seriously. On June 24th, for example, two of 2020’s main contenders Otis and 747 almost came to blows.
Otis was standing on a large rock just after the main waterfall, looking happy and calm, when 747 suddenly strutted towards him from nowhere. His teeth were bared and Otis backed off in surprise. Soon 747 had pushed Otis 5 metres downstream. Still in motion, Otis engaged his tactical brain and swerved around so that his back was now facing the waterfall again. For the next minute, the two fat bear competitors bared their teeth and lowered their heads. The tension was heavy, but 747 sensed that he had lost the higher ground and walked off, leaving a confused Otis to get fatter in peace.
By September, war still hadn’t broke out. Otis and 747 were now 300 pounds heavier, and standing 2 metres apart in the deep body of water following the main waterfalls. There was less teeth-baring and charging – it was hard to tell whether they were facing off or having a friendly discussion about the merits of smoked salmon versus fresh. Suddenly, bear 856 approached. With his head facing down, a sign of dominance, he strutted through the middle of Otis and 747. They quickly separated, but obviously, they were only pretending to be scared. After all, 856 has never won the fattest bear competition. Otis and 747 probably had a good laugh about that cocky idiot 856 later.
| 10 | The contest’s evolution |
The competition was conceived by Mike Fitz, a former ranger of Katmai National Park, as a fun idea one afternoon when he was browsing pictures from the Brooks Falls webcam. He never intended for it to be serious, and on September 30th, the first annual “fat bear Tuesday” was held, with all 16 rounds taking place in one day. There was no dramatic launch in a skyscraper with CNN and the BBC attending, just a simple post on the Katmai National Park facebook: “Throughout the day rangers will post “duelling” pictures of bears commonly seen on the #bearcam“. The system was one picture from July 2014 and one significantly more blubbery picture from September. Facebook users would vote for the best one, with the familiar 1 vs 1 knockout system in place, with 16 contenders.
Thus, the first ever fat bear round took place on September 30th at 08:30AKDT, with 284 Electra knocking out 500 Indy. Neither of those bears has ever won, but there’s still time! By 2015, it had morphed into a whole fat bear week, taking place in October.
These days, Fitz is shocked at how the Fat Bear Competition has grown. He’s recently called it a healthy escape from the negativity of social media, with a side course in educating the public about grizzlies.
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