It's peak fat bear watching season, so tune in now
It's the happiest time of the year — Fat Bear Week! This year's event takes place from Sept. 23-30, and Mashable will be following all the ursine activity. Katmai National Park and Preserve’s brown bears (also known as grizzly bears) spent the summer gorging on 4,500-calorie salmon, and they've transformed into rotund giants, some weighing more than 1,000 pounds. So, the Alaskan park is once again hosting its beloved annual competition to crown the fattest of the fat bears.
It's fishin' season.
The brown bears of Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve — the same bears of Fat Bear Week internet fame — are currently devouring the skin, flesh, and brains of 4,500-calorie sockeye salmon. The bounties of migrating fish attract an exceptional gathering of bears at Katmai's Brooks River, and the final week of July 2021 is burgeoning with activity. It's a superb opportunity to tune into the dynamic explore.org livestream, beamed from a remote part of the Alaskan Peninsula.
Bears young and old congregate at the river's waterfall, Brooks Falls, in July. It's an ideal place for bears to catch salmon, as the fish run into a natural "roadblock" that slows their migration. The energetic salmon must repeatedly try to leap over the waterfall. Meanwhile, the bears feast on crowds of fish.
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"Bear Insanity at Brooks Falls right now!!!" explore.org tweeted on Sunday night.
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Brown bears, except mothers with cubs, live mostly solitary lives, so the annual July congregations are exciting events. Spend some time bear watching, and you'll undoubtedly witness some of these behaviors :
Bear disagreements, and (more rarely) physical fights
A single dominant bear catching bounties of fish, perhaps over a dozen during the course of a few hours, beneath the waterfall (a prime fishing spot).
Bears catching fish in midair
Come August, many bears seek out other rivers with later salmon runs. But in September, brown bears return to Katmai's Brooks River in large numbers to feast on the remains of dead or dying salmon. By October, the bears will be fattened up, sometimes to ridiculous degrees, for their long, harsh winter hibernation.
Topics Animals
Mark was the science editor at Mashable. After working as a ranger with the National Park Service, he started a reporting career after seeing the extraordinary value in educating people about the happenings on Earth, and beyond.
He's descended 2,500 feet into the ocean depths in search of the sixgill shark, ventured into the halls of top R&D laboratories, and interviewed some of the most fascinating scientists in the world.
