Fat Bear Week 2024 drew to a close yesterday, with last year's chonky champ taking the crown once again. For the second year in a row, enthusiastic viewers voted for the impressively rotund 128 Grazer to take all in the annual bracket-style contest live streamed from Alaska's Katmai National Park.
"Grazer’s fur-midable reign continues! Let us raise our paws and honor the royal highness of roundness, the majestic monarch of munching, the snacking sovereign of salmon," writes the National Park Service on Instagram, calling Grazer one of the most successful and adaptable bears in the park when it comes to bulking up for winter.
Making Grazer's double victory all the sweeter is that her opponent, a 1,200 lb male bear named 32 Chunk, killed her cub back in July after it was washed over a waterfall.
"This is a win for moms everywhere," writes one follower.
Fat Bear Week got off to a grizzly start this year when one bear killed another on the live stream in front of thousands of viewers. However, the popular wildlife contest managed to recover, with some 100,000 votes being cast in the final day of the contest – 70 percent of which went to the queen herself.
Fat Bear Week draws millions of viewers from around the world to watch the bears fishing for salmon and bulking up before winter hibernation. You can continue watching the bears on the live cameras at Explore.org but if you're an outdoors fan and feeling a little bereft now the contest is over, go and check out all the best Amazon Prime Day Patagonia Deals we've rounded up to cheer yourself up.
