- Behold the winner of Fat Bear Week 2023, the two-time bear mom, Grazer.
- The National Parks Service runs annual votes to crown its fattest bears.
- A record 1,382,783 total votes were cast this year, culminating in a blowout victory for Grazer.
The people have spoken, and America has crowned its new fat bear champ.
Grazer, a female brown bear that’s “thicker than a bowl of oatmeal,” will reign this year as queen of the Katmai National Park and Preserve, National Park Services confirmed on Wednesday.
She beat out Chunk, a large adult male, in the finals of the ninth annual Fat Bear Week competition, a single-elimination tournament that seeks to determine the beefiest bear in Katmai.
Grazer’s finals win was a blowout victory, with her amassing 108,321 votes to Chunk’s 23,134.
People cast a record total of 1,382,783 votes during 2023’s Fat Bear Week, and Grazer received nearly a third of these votes.
Grazer, who’s successfully raised two litters of cubs, is one of the fattest bears this year plying the park’s rivers, Katmai National Park said.
The new queen of bears is known to often preemptively confront larger male bears so she can protect her cubs, earning a formidable reputation among the other bears, the park wrote.
It appears Grazer has no shortage of ardent fans, as seen by some of the posters appearing on Fat Bear Week’s website.
Screenshot/Explore.org
Grazer has been entered into the Fat Bear Week competition for years, but this year marks the first time she’s won.
She knocked out multi-year champion Bear 747, a humongous male in his mid-20s, in this year’s quarterfinals with a whopping 66,687 votes to 9,925.
Grazer’s size shows she’s a successful bear, Katmai National Park said. Brown bears gobble up as much as they can and grow fat in the summer and fall to survive winter hibernation.
“Though unaware of her title in this imaginary contest, her success is real! For bears, fat = success, and she’s set up well for winter,” the park wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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