Fat Bear Week Is Back. Here’s Your Reading List.

Now entering its ninth year, Fat Bear Week pits 12 of Katmai National Park and Preserve’s biggest bruins against each other in a tournament-style bracket, with fans picking their favorite in a series of match-ups until only one big unit is left to take the crown. It’s like March Madness, the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, and Mr. Olympia all rolled into one. But more than anything, it’s popular: According to the National Park Service, viewers cast more than 1 million votes in last year’s contest, which saw 747—nicknamed “Bear Force One” by supporters—triumph over a stacked field.

With the 2023 contest beginning today, we’ve rounded up three of our favorite articles on bearkind’s biggest “sporting” event. Read on to learn more about the history, science, and personalities behind Fat Bear Week, and head over to Explore.org’s Brooks Falls cam to catch the big guys and girls in action. Then, it’s time to cast your vote.

The Implausible Fame of Fat Bear Week

How did a rudimentary popularity contest thrown together by a handful of park rangers become a media spectacle? In 2022, Senior Editor Zoe Gates broke down the history of the event that put Katmai on the map for the internet’s armchair animal lovers.

In this day and age, we could all use something to rally around. And what better cause than the endearing, corpulent survival tactics of a couple of bears? Fat Bear Week is a celebration of persistence, prosperity, and good, clean, non-polarizing fun (OK, maybe a little polarizing). Maybe there’s a part of us that wishes our problems were as simple as catching enough salmon to last us through winter.

Otis, the King of the Fat Bears, Is Proof that Getting Old Isn’t a Death Sentence

No bear has won as many Fat Bear Week titles as 480 Otis, a 27-ish-year-old griz who has taken first place four of the nine years that Katmai has held the contest. After nearly three decades, Otis is elderly for a brown bear, and his body is showing it—when he showed up at Brooks Falls this year, his ribs were poking through his skin, though he’s since put on pounds. But for me, that only makes it sweeter when the old guy takes it. In 2021, I explained why. (If you want to help Otis to a fifth title, you can vote for him on Friday, when he’ll face off against 32 Chunk.)

“Otis’s success lies in how he’s turned his age and experience into an advantage: As younger bears have displaced him from the prime spots on Brooks Falls, he’s learned to fish as patiently as possible, sitting in one spot for hours and scooping up passing salmon from the water without burning any extra calories. Occasionally, Explore.org’s Brooks Falls webcams will catch him asleep at his post on the edge of the river.”

How Do the Fat Bears Get So Fat, Anyway?

Katmai’s portly brown bears aren’t just cute: Their pre-winter weight gain is a marvel of biology. During their fall hyperphagia, adult bears can consume 30,000 calories in a day, with some larger specimens maxing out at around 60,000 calories, doubling their weight in as little as a few months. Zoe Gates spoke to bear researcher Danielle Rivet to get the background on how they do it.

Experience plays a factor, too. Fans of Fat Bear Week will recognize favorites returning year after year—animals familiar with the area have a better chance of bulking up quickly.

“They know where the best places are to fish,” says Rivet. “A lot of the older and more experienced bears will pick off those areas rather early in the season and they’ll defend their spots pretty ferociously.”