A huge brown bear named Backpack has won Fat Bear Week, an online competition held every year in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
Backpack, who is 20 years old and weighs between 1000 and 1200 pounds (around 450 to 545 kilograms), beat another bear called 910 in the final round of voting. More than 2.3 million votes were cast in total, and the voting website even crashed on the first day because so many people wanted to take part.
Backpack got his name because, as a cub, he used to cling to his mother’s back. His mother, a bear named Holly, actually won Fat Bear Week herself back in 2019.
Park ranger Sarah Bruce said Backpack has a calm nature compared with other bears his age. “He’s more of a stoic presence on the river. He doesn’t really get into drama or cause any upset in the hierarchy,” she said.
Each autumn, Alaska’s brown bears eat as much as they can to build up fat before a long winter of hibernation, which is why the fattest bear wins.
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