Squiz Shortcuts - Fat Bear Week

Your Shortcut to Fat Bear Week

This week marks the 10th year of Fat Bear Week, where people vote online for who they think is the fattest brown bear in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. It’s a lot of fun and an annual Squiz favourite - but there’s a serious side to it too… So, in this Shortcut, we look at:

• the origins of Fat Bear Week

• the dramatic start to this year’s competition 

• and the use of wildlife cameras to help conservation efforts around the world.

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What is Fat Bear Week?
It’s an annual event every October where people watch brown bears on a live stream as they stack on weight over the summer in preparation for hibernation, and then they vote for the one they think is the fattest. The bears - Alaska Peninsula Browns - are some of the largest in the world and need to eat about a year’s food supply in 6 months to store enough fat to survive inside their dens through winter. That sees them out fishing for fatty salmon daily. Voting for this year’s competition opened yesterday and goes through until 8 October. 

Who came up with it?
A ranger called Mike Fitz came up with the idea. Trail cameras were initially put up around the park in 2012 to let people see the wildlife in the area. One day a viewer posted a couple of screenshots showing ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of the same bear looking significantly bigger within the space of a few months. That led to the idea of a poll to get people more engaged with the bears and the park. It started in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday which was such a huge success it was extended to Fat Bear Week to allow more time for people to vote.

How popular is it?
Very. Both the competition and the bears have developed a cult following. Last year more than 1.4 million people from over 100 countries voted to crown a female bear called 128 Grazer the winner. She got 108,000 votes and is the 3rd female bear to take out the title. Park rangers reckon she was able to do so by having a “single girl summer” where she concentrated on herself after rearing 2 litters of cubs in the years beforehand.

How close are the cameras?
Pretty close! They’re called Bear Cams and they’re positioned in trees and on bridges over the Brooks River so you get a live, up-close view of the bears and what they get up to. And there’s quite a bit of action that goes on…

Ooh like what?
The cameras capture everything from bear cubs playing to adult bears “snorkelling” for salmon (that’s what it’s called when they dive underwater for their catch) and frequent fights over territory. In fact, the draw for this year’s competition was delayed after 2 big bears had a fight, ending in a bear called 469 killing a Fat Bear Week regular named 402. The brawl was caught on camera and watched by distressed viewers, and the park rangers had to explain that although “we love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat…the ferocity of bears is real.”

RIP 402…
Yeh, and park rangers also say another competition regular, Otis, might’ve succumbed to old age because he hasn’t made a reappearance this summer…    

How heavy do the bears get?
Grazer was tipped to weigh 318kg, while some adult male bears have been known to grow heavier than 500kg.

How does it work?
The Katmai rangers take photos of the bears from the beginning of summer to the end of autumn, so they have comparison shots for people to base their votes on. The park is home to several bears who’ve become favourites - and the competition works like a tournament, where the photos of the bears are pitted against each other in knockout rounds. For a cuteness overload, there’s also a junior bear comp.

Who is your money on? 
Bear 747 is an older bear but he’s a crowd favourite, having won Fat Bear Week in 2020 and 2022 - even though he was nearly disqualified in 2022 after a cheating scandal where people tried to rig the votes in his favour. Another hot favourite is 32 Chunk - he was a finalist last year. But our money is on Grazer again - go the girls. 

Are there prizes?
There’s no actual prizes for Fat Bear Week, it’s all just a lot of fun. But the big winners in all of this are the 2,200-odd brown bears that live in Katmai because when you get down to it, it’s about wildlife conservation and making sure the pristine wilderness they live in survives the effects of climate change and the threat of oil drilling in the area.

How has Fat Bear Week helped with that? 
Katmai National Park has one of the highest bear populations on Earth, and they thrive off some of the largest salmon runs in the world. So the more people grow attached to the bears, the better they’re protected through fundraising and environmental lobbying. 

What other wildlife can I watch around the world?
The cameras in Katmai are run by a company called Explore.org, which has a network of live nature cams all around the world. You can watch pandas in China, lions in an African game reserve, and eagles in the US. They’re basically internet cameras that stream 24 hours a day, so the footage they’re providing has been really valuable for scientists and conservationists. 

How is the footage useful?
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says wildlife cameras are increasingly being used all around the world in different ways, from studying animal behaviour and habitats to the effects of human interaction and climate change on animal populations. 

What have they found?
One of those climate impact studies was in the Arctic, where researchers attached collar cameras to polar bears and found that melting ice masses are forcing the bears onto land in increasing numbers. The bears had to resort to eating foods like berries and seaweed instead of their usual diet of seals, which is putting them at an increased risk of starvation. It’s the kind of information scientists can use to make a difference.

Do we use them in Australia? 
Yep. We’ve attached cameras to sea lions to help with habitat research and mapping our ocean floor. It’s important because Australian sea lion numbers were greatly reduced by hunting up until the 20th century, and now they’re under threat from commercial fishing nets and pots. Gathering information about their feeding habits has always been difficult because they feed at the bottom of the sea. But Professor Simon Goldsworthy from the South Australian Research and Development Institute said the cameras have been “a gamechanger” - and that the footage is “giving us a window into their world that we haven’t had before.”

What other ways are wildlife cameras being used?
Some scientific programs are interactive and give viewers a chance to get involved. In the UK, volunteers have helped tag more than 28,000 animals online for a Network Railways program called Railway Wildlife that was set up to monitor the animals and their movements around the railways. Another one is the fish doorbell…

The fish what...? 
A Squizer put us onto the fish doorbell earlier this year. It’s in the Netherlands in a city called Utrecht, where fish in the lock migrate upstream each year in early Spring to spawn. But there aren’t many boats around at that time so the lock doesn’t open as much, meaning the fish get stuck, leaving them vulnerable to predators. 

Where does the doorbell come in?
Scientists put an underwater camera in the lock, and when fish are in the frame waiting to get through, viewers can push a digital button that alerts the lock keeper to open the door and let them pass. It’s offline at the moment but it’ll open again in March when the fish need it…

Animal cams are really a thing…
Yep. Now get your popcorn ready because there are some chonky bears to vote for…

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