The release of the tournament bracket for this year’s Fat Bear Week has been delayed after a fight between two of Katmai National Park and Preserve’s brown bears resulted in the death of one of the event’s competitors.
Fat Bear Week is usually a celebration of all things chonky as Katmai’s resident brown bears pile on the pounds in preparation for winter, with fans across the globe voting for which bear they believe to be the biggest unit of them all.
But early on Monday morning, two of the park’s bears – adult male 469 and adult female 402 – got caught up in a fight. The incident, which was caught by one of the area’s many livestream cameras, ended in 402’s death.
While Fat Bear Week itself is still set to take place between October 2-8, the aftermath of the incident has seen the reveal of the tournament bracket – which was initially scheduled for Monday afternoon – delayed until Tuesday, October 1.
Instead, viewers were met with a livestream (fair warning – some of the footage might be distressing to watch) discussing the morning’s events.
Speaking during the stream, naturalist and Fat Bear Week founder Mike Fitz said: “We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real. The risks that they face are real. Their lives can be hard and their deaths can be painful.”
During the discussion, footage from the incident shows the two bears fighting in the water.
“It’s really unclear how it started or why they might even be fighting at all,” said Fitz. “A fight over fish would not have lasted this long.”
One suggestion is that 469 was driven to do so by hunger, later being seen dragging 402 out of the water to an area off-camera.
“It’s an uncommon thing to see a bear predating on another bear, but it’s not completely out of the question,” said Katmai ranger Sarah Bruce.
“We do know that this time of year bears are in that state of hyperphagia [excessive hunger] and they are eating anything and everything they can,” Bruce added. “I don’t know why a bear would want to expend so much energy trying to kill another bear as a food source.”
Anglers banned from the area
Also on Monday, Katmai officials announced that the Brooks River corridor, where the bears congregate to feed, would be closed to all non-subsistence users until October 31, after four incidents in which anglers were spotted feeding fish to bears by park employees.
It is unknown whether or not those people were trying to rig Fat Bear Week by feeding their favorites, but avoiding a scandal (which the competition is no stranger to) is the least of the park’s worries.
“Bears receiving fish from anglers creates conditions where the bears can learn to consider people as a source of food, which leads to unsafe conditions,” said a release from Katmai National Park and Preserve emailed to IFLScience. “Once a bear acquires human food it may lose its fear of people and become dangerous.”
Maybe save the fish for your own dinner instead – given the sheer rotundness of Fat Bear Week’s previous champions, we’d say the bears are doing pretty great all by themselves.
