The annual “Fat Bear Week” was postponed after a bear was killed by another bear on livestream camera as stunned viewers watched online.
Warning: This article contains footage of a deadly bear fight.
Fat Bear Week is an annual tournament, that starts in October, which pits bears in Katmai National Park, Alaska against each other in a week-long bracket-style competition.
Public voters are invited to watch the bears as they fatten up to survive the winter on live webcams. The competition then lets fans crown the bear who successfully added the most weight as they prepare for their winter hibernation.
But this year, the iconic event was postponed after a brown bear was killed by another bear on the live camera feed.
The deadly fight took place around 9.30 a.m. at the mouth of the Brooks River in Katmai, Alaska, as organizers prepared to kick off Fat Bear Week.
The two bears were seen fighting in the river on livestream footage. An adult male known as Bear 469 and an adult female known as Bear 402 battled in a lengthy and violent fight for over 20 minutes.
Stunned viewers watched the vicious brawl between the two animals — which eventually ended with Bear 469 killing Bear 402 and dragging her body ashore.
‘An Uncommon Thing to See’
The organizers of 2024 Fat Bear Week decided to delay the unveiling of this year’s contestants following the unsettling incident and announced the participants one day late.
“Earlier today, a bear killed another bear on the river,” Mike Fritz, the resident naturalist with webcam company Explore.org, said in a conversation on Monday’s livestream event held in place of the scheduled unveiling. “It was caught live on the webcams and we thought, well, we can’t go ahead with our Fat Bear Week bracket reveal without addressing this situation first.”
The deadly incident served as a grim reminder of the animals’ predatory instincts — with Weber suggesting that Bear 469’s killing of Bear 402 was driven by hunger.
“We do know at this time of year that bears are in that state of hyperphagia, and they are eating anything and everything they can,” Weber explains.
“I don’t know why a bear would want to expend so much energy trying to kill another bear as a food source. It’s an uncommon thing to see a bear predating on another bear, but it’s not completely out of the question. So it’s hard to say how this started.”
Image credits: Header photo licensed via NPS/ Explore.org.