Welcome to Fat Bear Week 2020! Katmai National Park and Preserve’s brown bears spent the summer gorging on 4,500-calorie salmon, and they’ve transformed into rotund giants, some over 1,000 pounds. The park is holding its annual playoff-like competition for the fattest of the fat bears (you can vote online between Sept. 30 and Oct. 6). Mashable will be following all the ursine activity.
The fat bears have grown exceptionally fat, even for fat bears.
A prodigious, record-breaking salmon run in a major river feeding Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve provided the brown bears — who are livestreamed on explore.org — an abundance of fish this year. The bears munch the skin, red flesh, and brains of the salmon throughout the summer, amassing fat stores to survive their long winter famine (aka hibernation). Read more…
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