Alaska’s annual Fat Bear Week competition is one on the world’s biggest wildlife-watching events, and this week Bear 128, a female mama bear nicknamed Grazer, won for the second year in a row.
Fat Bear Week calls on fans around the world to vote for their favorite rotund bears in Katmai National Park and Preserve, at the north end of the Alaska Peninsula. The bears there spend most of the late summer and early fall salmon run sitting in the river, gorging themselves fish.
Grazer received 71,248 votes from fat bear fans during the finals Tuesday.
Longtime past champion Bear 32, aka Chunk, came in a distant second with 30,48 votes.
Similar Bears, But Not The Same
Alaska Peninsula brown bears and Wyoming grizzlies are quite similar, but technically different sub-species of bruin.
Bears in both locations pig out this time of year. Biologists call it hyperphagia, when bears cram down as many calories as possible, fattening up in preparation for hibernation.
But Alaska brown bears have the distinct advantage of being right next to a virtually endless supply of salmon. As the fish struggle upriver to spawn, the bears scoop them up and gobble them down as fast as they can.
There are no such easy meals for Wyoming grizzlies.
Grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) work much harder for their food. They rely on bison carcasses, elk and deer gut piles left behind by hunters, roots and whatever else they can find.
Especially inside Yellowstone Park, they have to compete with wolves and coyotes for every scrap.
They even will pig out on moths to get the huge amounts of calories they need.
Alaska Bears Really Tip The Scales
Bears can lose up to a third of their body weight during hibernation, so the minute they emerge from their dens in the spring, food is the first thing on their minds.
They eat steadily throughout the summer, and then really kick the hogging into high gear in late September and October.
It's not unusual for adult Alaska Brown bears to weigh 1,000 pounds. Some are rumored to be in the neighborhood of 1,500 pounds.
Wyoming Grizzlies Smaller, But Stil Formidable
Lacking the salmon buffet, GYE grizzlies in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho would have no chance trying to compete in Fat Bear Week.
Around here, a 700-pound grizzly is considered huge, Wyoming Game and Fish Large Carnivore Specialist Dan Thompson told Cowboy State Daily.
“We've had a few bears that I am aware of over 700 pounds in the GYE. In 2019 we caught a male that tipped the scales at 711 pounds,” he said.
Most grizzlies are considerably smaller.
“Adult females weigh ‘on average’ approximately 275 pounds, with adult males ‘on average’ weighing more than 400 pounds,” Thompson said. “This is based on data from bears captured, handled and weighed with an accurate scale in Wyoming.”
“Obviously, the same bear will have a much different weight in June than October when they could have 4 solid inches of body fat, but those numbers demonstrate the sexual dimorphism in size and a more accurate representation of reality,” he added.
And although they’ll never reach the gargantuan, quadruple-digit weight classes of Alaksa’s brown bears, Wyoming grizzlies are certainly no slouches when it comes to sheer size.
“Bears in the fall are fat and look extremely formidable, whether they weigh 250 or 550,” Thompson said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
