The championship bracket version of this year’s Fat Bear Week has been postponed after a fight between two Katmai National Park and Preserve brown bears resulted in the death of a competitor in the event.
Fat Bear Week is usually a celebration of all things fat as Katmai’s resident brown bears pile on the extra pounds in preparation for winter, with fans around the world voting for which bear they believe is the biggest unit of all.
But early Monday morning, two of the park’s bears — adult male 469 and adult female 402 — got into a fight. The accident, which was captured by one of several live cameras in the area, ended in the death of 402 people.
While Fat Bear Week itself is still scheduled to take place from 2 to 8 October, the aftermath of the incident has seen the reveal of the championship bracket – initially scheduled to take place on a Monday afternoon – be postponed until Tuesday 1 October.
Instead, viewers were met with a live broadcast (fair warning – some footage may be distressing to watch) discussing the morning’s events.
Speaking during the broadcast, naturalist and Fat Bear Week founder Mike Fitz said: “We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and abundant body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real. And the dangers they face are real. Their lives can be hard and their deaths can be painful.” .
During the discussion, footage of the incident showed the two bears fighting in the water.
“It’s not really clear how it started or why they’re even fighting,” Fitz said. “The fight over fish couldn’t have lasted that long.”
One suggestion is that 469 was driven to do this by hunger, and was later seen pulling 402 out of the water to an off-camera area.
“It’s not uncommon to see a bear preying on another bear, but it’s not completely unlikely,” Katmai ranger Sarah Bruce said.
“We know that bears at this time of year are in a state of hyperphagia [excessive hunger] “They eat 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.”
Hunters banned from the area
Also on Monday, Katmai officials announced that the Brooks River Trail, where bears congregate to feed, would be closed to all non-subsistence users until Oct. 31, after four incidents in which hunters were seen feeding bears by park staff.
It’s not known whether or not these people are trying to manipulate Fat Bear Week by feeding their favorites, but avoiding scandal (which the competition is no stranger to) is the least of the park’s worries.
“Bears receiving fish from hunters creates conditions where bears can learn to regard people as a food source, leading to unsafe conditions,” said a statement from Katmai National Park and Preserve emailed to IFLScience. “Once a bear has access to human food, it may lose its fear of people and become dangerous.”
Maybe keep the fish for your dinner instead – given the sheer roundness of the previous Fat Bear Week champions, we’d say the bears are doing admirably on their own.
