Voting is scheduled to start this week for Katmai National Park & Preserve's annual Fat Bear Week, despite a grisly setback. The AP reports that the 10th annual "chunk-off"—which lets fans pick which bear in that part of the Alaska Peninsula is the plumpest after a season of chowing down for the winter—will indeed open up to voters on Wednesday. But on Monday, when this year's corpulent contestants were set to be unveiled to the public, that segment was delayed after Bear 402, the mother of at least eight litters who was widely expected to pop up as a competitor, was killed by Bear 469, a male bear, during a morning scuffle in the Brooks River, per NPR.
The outlet notes that "stunned" viewers watching online via webcam witnessed the pair "engaged in a lengthy and violent fight in deep water at the river's mouth—a clash that eventually ended with one bear dying, and the other dragging her body ashore." You can watch it here, along with analysis. Based on the video, 402 appears to have been overpowered by her male counterpart and drowned, according to Explore.org naturalist Mike Fitz. After the killing, the reveal of this year's contestant brackets was subsequently postponed from Monday until Tuesday evening.
Although experts aren't sure exactly what caused 469 to attack 402, they say the male bear saw the female bear as prey. "This time of year, bears are ... eating anything and everything they can," Katmai ranger Sarah Bruce tells NPR. But "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." There are no planned repercussions for Bear 469. "It's just kind of part of bear behavior and bear life," says Bruce. "It's one of the sadder parts of it." Voting for Fat Bear Week continues through Tuesday; meet the competitors here. (More Fat Bear Week stories.)
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