‘Fat Bear Week' Celebrates Nature's Hibernators

Fat Bear Week has come and gone, with a bear known as 480 Otis becoming the most. “Brown bears are hibernators, so they will sometimes go as much as 6 months without eating, drinking, urinating, defecating. And they’re surviving on their fat reserves…they need to eat a year’s worth of food in fewer than 6 months,” says Mike Fitz, a former park ranger at Katmai National Park in Alaska. (This is a photo of a brown bear in that park, but we can’t tell if it was a contestant this year.)