Category: Bears

Alaska Bears Brown Bears Fat Bear Week Science

Day 3 of Fat Bear Week features a big showdown between two former champs

sudshr47 October 5, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing! 

Just eight fat bears remain. The Fat Bear Week quarterfinals have arrived. 

Thursday’s matchups saw the chubby cubbies fall to Bear 719 and Chunk beat out Bear 812, and Friday’s heat-to-heads look particularly competitive.

The first features a matchup between last year’s champion, Bear 480 “Otis,” and the impressively filled-out Bear 409 “Beadnose” — also a former champion. Voting opened on the Katmai Facebook page at 10 a.m. ET. Read more…

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Fictional bears, ranked

sudshr47 October 5, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

While most people’s eyes are on the real-life bears of Alaska and their quest to get as large as possible, we wanted to pay homage to some of the most famous bears in the world: fictional bears. Some are animated, some are CGI, some preach law and family values, and some just suck! Here are some of the most famous bears in fiction, ranked from worst to best. Read more…

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A famous matriarch bear is missing from Fat Bear Week. Where could she be?

sudshr47 October 5, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

A top competitor is missing from this year’s Fat Bear Week contest.

For a fleeting moment in June, rangers spotted Bear 410 — the oldest-known bear at Alaska’s Brooks River — walking up the chilly stream where the eager bears spend months snatching five-pound salmon from the water.  Read more…

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View More A famous matriarch bear is missing from Fat Bear Week. Where could she be?
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Day 2 of Fat Bear Week pits a scarred, powerful male against a young challenger

sudshr47 October 4, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

Get ready for another day of fat brown bear face-offs.

The second day of the Fat Bear Week competition features two separate matches. The first pits Bear 32 “Chunk” — who in 2017 was the most dominant bear in Alaska’s Brooks River — against a younger, teenage bear. Read more…

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View More Day 2 of Fat Bear Week pits a scarred, powerful male against a young challenger
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Which fat bear are you? Take this Fat Bear Week quiz to find out

sudshr47 October 4, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

Katmai National Park’s Fat Bear Week contest is now underway, with 13 very large omnivores pitted against each other in a playoff-like bracket. 

Each day, you can place your votes, but have you ever wondered which fat bear you would be if you lived in Katmai?  Read more…

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View More Which fat bear are you? Take this Fat Bear Week quiz to find out
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Day 1 of Fat Bear Week voting pits an ex-champion against a young upstart

sudshr47 October 3, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

It borders on nearly inconceivable that any wild animal can grow so exceptionally plump over the course of just four months. But, it’s happening.

The voting for Fat Bear Week in Katmai National Park — where bears are blessed with a copious supply of sockeye salmon that allows them to fatten up tremendously before hibernating — has opened up, and there are two matches in play on Wednesday. Read more…

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View More Day 1 of Fat Bear Week voting pits an ex-champion against a young upstart
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An appreciation of Holly, the fat bear mom who adopted and raised an abandoned cub

sudshr47 October 3, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

In July 2014, a stranded bear cub spent the night clinging to the upper reaches of a spruce tree along the banks of the Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska. 

After spending at least 24 hours curled up amid the branches, the young, largely helpless bear likely succumbed to thirst and hunger, and crawled down. Read more…

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View More An appreciation of Holly, the fat bear mom who adopted and raised an abandoned cub
Bears Fat Bear Week Katmai National Park Science

Enormous Bear 747 may just take the cake as Fat Bear Week’s fattest bear

sudshr47 October 2, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

Over the course of just three hours in late June, ecologist Mike Fitz stood atop a bear viewing platform in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and watched Bear 747, a dominant male, consume 15 whole salmon. 

“That’s about 67,000 calories,” Fitz, a former Katmai ranger, said over email. Read more…

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View More Enormous Bear 747 may just take the cake as Fat Bear Week’s fattest bear
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Who’s the fattest of them all? Get to know the fat, hairy bears of Fat Bear Week 2018

sudshr47 October 2, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

By the fall of each year, the brown bears of Katmai National Park grow exceptionally fat. The largest males, in fact, can tip the scales at more than 1,000 pounds.

This year, 13 plump omnivores have made it into the official Fat Bear Week contest, after park rangers selected the bulkiest contenders.  Read more…

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View More Who’s the fattest of them all? Get to know the fat, hairy bears of Fat Bear Week 2018
Bear Cam Bears Fat Bear Week Katmai National Park Science

Fat Bear Week is here: Your complete guide to nature’s most exciting competition

sudshr47 October 1, 2018

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Welcome to Fat Bear Week at Mashable! Each fall, Katmai National Park holds a competition as Alaska’s brown bears finish fattening up for their long winter hibernation. This year, Mashable is getting in on the salmon-munching action. Check back with us all week as we follow the fat bear face-offs each day, and remember to get your votes in for each round. Happy fishing!

For bears, getting fat is a matter of life and death.

It’s been about six months since the brown bears of Alaska’s Katmai National Park — the bears of bear cam fame — emerged from their well-dug winter dens. 

They’ve been munching on copious amounts of 4,500-calorie salmon ever since, putting on hundreds of pounds while thousands of people watched the bears’ fishing antics on the explore.org webcams over the summer. Read more…

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View More Fat Bear Week is here: Your complete guide to nature’s most exciting competition
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Judge halts grizzly hunting because Yellowstone bears need to find more diverse sex partners

sudshr47 September 26, 2018

The grizzly bears are spared from hunting, for now. 
For as low as $600 per hunting permit, grizzly bears were scheduled to be legally hunted in Wyoming beginning on Sept. 1, making it the first such hunt in over four decades. But after first ju…

View More Judge halts grizzly hunting because Yellowstone bears need to find more diverse sex partners
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Alaska’s badass bears: A battle to reclaim the river’s throne

sudshr47 September 25, 2018

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In the deep Alaskan wilderness, an imposing brown bear has regained his lost throne.

Bear 856 — well known on the explore.org live streaming webcams — had been the dominant bear along Katmai National Park’s Brooks River for at least six years. 

But last summer, Bear 856 appeared skinny and enfeebled. Another large male, Bear 32 — nicknamed “Chunk” by the rangers — exploited 856’s condition and took control of the bear’s dynamic river hierarchy. Rangers watched from elevated bear-viewing platforms as an emboldened Chunk pushed other bears around and claimed the river’s best fishing spots. 

Yet, over the last three and a half months, Bear 856 has reestablished his dominance, even over the likes of formidable Bear 32 and the tank-like Bear 747. At times, 856 has tackled other large bears that have attempted to challenge him, but he hasn’t ceded any ground. Now, the bears are fattening up for their long winter hibernation, and it appears 856 will end the season as the river’s king, once again. Read more…

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