Fat Bear Week Champ Is a 'Giant Among Bears'

After an unusually dramatic voting process, Bear 747, aka Bear Force One, has been crowned the winner of this year's Fat Bear Week, a contest held as the bears in Alaska's Ketmai National Park pack on the pounds as hibernation approaches. The male bear, believed to be one of the biggest brown bears on the planet at up to 1,400 pounds, "ripped apart the salmon—and the competition" to claim his second title, the park tweeted. "We don't know exactly how big he is, but he is a giant among bears," Fat Bear Week creator Mike Fitz said Tuesday. Bear Force One was also the 2020 champion.

The tournament pits 12 bears against each other in online votes in March Madness-style brackets. The winner isn't always the fattest bear, although it clearly was this time, the Washington Post reports. Voters also consider the bears' personalities, as observed on webcams, plus the rate of weight gain and obstacles they may have overcome. This year's runner-up was Bear 901, described by Explore.org, which runs the competition, as a "medium-small yet quickly growing adult female." Explore.org says Bear 747 was behind in his semifinal Sunday against Bear 435, a female nicknamed Holly, before irregularities were detected.

"Someone stuffed the ballot box!" Explore.org tweeted Sunday night, calling it a "Fat Bear Week scandal for the ages." Explore.org's Candice Rusch tells CNN that organizers became suspicious when Holly came from behind to gain a 6,000-vote lead in the space of a few hours. "While not unheard of, it is very uncommon for a bear to come back late in the day like that. We ended up finding just over 9,000 spam votes," Rusch says. She says the fake votes were easy to detect. They were discarded and previous votes were reviewed. "Holly, who is blissfully unaware of this or any other election, did not press for an independent recount," NPR notes. (More bears stories.)