May the chonkiest bear win: Tubby titans face off in Alaska for Fat Bear Week

Titans of tub, laureates of lard — brown bears at Brooks River in Alaska's Katmai National Park have spent their summer packing on the pounds and are now facing off in an elimination-style competition for the title of Ultimate Ursid.

Call them what you will (and Katmai National Park has no end of creative names for these honkin' chonks), the fuzzy foes have napped and snacked their way to greatness just in time for winter — and now the park is celebrating their success.

This year's competition began last Wednesday with 12 bears vying for the top title, and the winner will be crowned on Fat Bear Tuesday, Oct. 11. You can browse the contestants' before-and-after shots here.

Fat Bear Tuesday, which began in 2014, used to be the only day of the event, as the park aimed to highlight "the hard work of the bears and the healthy ecosystem of Brooks River," said Felicia Jimenez, a park ranger at Katmai National Park and Preserve.

"It was so successful, and there was just so much love for it, that it expanded into Fat Bear Week. And it's just expanded ever since," she said.

Each day, in an elimination-style competition, the park asks people to vote for the fattest of the fat. The week's success has grown to proportions as robust as its flabby namesakes: tens of thousands of people visit the event website each day to vote.

On Thursday, more people voted for their favourite fat bear — over 100,000 votes — than in the entire Alberta UCP leadership election.

Last year, about 800,000 votes were cast.

The competition's popularity has also spun out a second contest, Fat Bear Week Junior, which happened Sept. 28 and 29.

The bears at Brooks River are basically grizzlies, Jimenez said, except for their rich diet of salmon, salmon and more salmon. They gorge themselves on the sockeye runs that crowd the river watershed. The fatter they get, the easier it will be for them to survive hibernation.

"We're very fortunate that the sockeye salmon run is so strong and that the ecosystem is pristine and it can support our healthy population of brown bears in the way that it does," Jimenez said.

"The bears are just getting so fat on how well the ecosystem and how well the salmon run is doing."

This year's contenders include Otis (Bear #480), the reigning champion who won the crown in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2021. There's also Holly (Bear #435), who won in 2019 and "is looking really, really good this year — she's a monster," Jimenez said.

Then there's the dark horse, Bear #901, who is new to the scene this year.