Fat Bear Week is a fun way to celebrate bears’ voracious appetites. But the popular competition also can help raise awareness about how you can stay safe if you encounter a bear.

Every year, the Katmai National Park in Alaska puts on a March Madness-style bracket of all the fattest bears in their park. It's a celebration of fatness, because a fat bear ahead of hibernation ...

Male bear "747" was the 2020 Fat Bear Week champion, and he's back in the running this year. NPs Photos/Katmai National Park 2022-10-04T07:30:57Z ...

Bear 747, a blubbery beast at Katmai National Park and Preserve, was voted the winner of this year’s Fat Bear Week, a celebration of the park’s bulging bears as they fatten up before hibernation.

Chunk had some sizable tummy reserves this year, but 747's junk in the trunk (and all over) was too much to handle. Fat Bear Week is a celebration of how bears prepare for winter hibernation.

Fat Bear Week is an annual tournament-style competition during which the public votes for their favorite furry fatso from Brooks River at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. US Today ...

One of the most dominant bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve's Brooks River, Bear 32, "Chunk." Credit: explore.org Imagine not eating for half a year. One of the largest and most dominant ...

The participating bears are matched against each other in a March Madness-style competition (single-elimination), where online visitors can vote for a Fat Bear Week 2021 champion.

The Fat Bear Week bracket will be revealed on Sept. 30, ahead of voting. There is also a Fat Bear Junior competition, with voting starting on Sept. 26.

(NEXSTAR) – Fat Bear Week is off to a violent start this year. The scheduled reveal of the bracket and all the chunky contestants was pushed back by a day after one bear, No. 469, attacked and ...