A new king of the forest was crowned Alaska’s fattest bear and was named Bear 747 after the enormous Boeing airline.
The US state’s Katmai National Park and Preserve held an online voting contest called Fat Bear Week, where Bear 747 became the victor.
‘This year he really packed on the pounds, looking like he was fat enough to hibernate in July and yet continuing to eat until his belly seemed to drag along the ground by late September,’ the park said in a statement.
Bear 747 wan out against a heavy competition of 2,200 brown bears who were pitted against each other in rounds of brackets similar to college basketball.
The park said that Fat Bear Weeks is a fun way to learn about the nature of Alaska from a distance.
The bears can grow to over 1000 pounds from feasting on salmon during the summer, but they can also lose a third of their body weight during hibernation, making Fat Bear Week a ‘survival of the fattest’ as the Park called it.
Katmai Park is a 4 million-acre park with luscious mountains, lakes and streams, but also holds the world’s densest population of brown bears.
The Brooks River is in the park which is a prime spot for bears to eat salmon swimming upstream in the summer.
Katmai Park Ranger told Reuters that this was a record salmon year, making the bears have much more food to eat.
‘The combination of the big salmon run and fewer people, this has really handed the river to the bears,” she said.
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