Fat Bear Week is here: Meet the contestants
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The race is on to find the chonkiest bear in Alaska's Katmai National Park.
Driving the news: Fat Bear Week, an annual March Madness-style bracket contest, kicked off yesterday — and the internet loves it.
The big picture: The brown bears gobble up Brooks River sockeye salmon to bulk up before hibernating.
- Fans, who follow along on live camera feeds, vote to crown the bear that's done the best job fattening up.
- Katmai National Park unveiled its slate of 12 contestants on Monday, including Chunk, Grazer and Holly. Also competing is Otis, the Fat Bear Week champion of 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2021.
How to participate: The public can vote on Explore.org for their favorites between Wednesday and Oct. 10, otherwise known as Fat Bear Tuesday.
- There's also a live chat where fans can discuss the competition.
Zoom in: Fat Bear Week has seen its popularity skyrocket since its start in 2014, Dave Barak, public affairs specialist at the National Parks Service, told Axios.
- More than one million votes were cast in last year's Fat Bear Week, according to Barak. The Washington Post reported that over 10 million people tuned in to the live camera feeds last year. 2022.
- The phenomenon has become so popular there's now even a Fat Bear Junior for "chubby cubbies."
Between the lines: Though Fat Bear Week is a fun and wholesome competition, it also raises awareness of important issues to bears' survival — such as the availability of salmon and clean water, according to the Department of Interior.
- "The reason that we get these bears, at this size, at Katmai, is because they do come from a fairly pristine environment, where they are able to eat the salmon that they need, they're able to roam the way that they need to roam," Barak said.
