747 seen in Katmai National Park & Preserve’s Brooks River, Alaska, Sept. 6, 2022.
It's March Madness for fans of the lumbering brown bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve. Already, tens of thousands of votes were cast for Fat Bear Week to find this year's biggest heavyweight from what the park calls "some of the largest brown bears on Earth."
The competition to find the biggest winner started in 2014 with Fat Bear Tuesday, before the event expanded to its current week-long internet spectacle as part of the park's educational and conservational outreach efforts.
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Voters are urged to consider each contender's rate of growth from early summer to early fall, as the bears do their best to fill up on salmon from Brooks River before they hibernate for the winter.
You can place your vote through Tuesday here.
This year 480, whom fans know as Otis – and whom Katmai rangers know as the "portly patriarch of paunch" – return to Brooks River to defend his four-time chonk champ title against other time-tested fan favorites.
Remaining contenders include 128 ("Grazer"), 435 ("Holly"), 32 ("Chunk"), 151 ("Walker"), 901, 164 and the "typically very fat" 2020 winner, 747.
They will face off against each other until one is crowned on Fat Bear Tuesday, Oct. 11.
