The salmon? Eaten. The days? Shorter. The bears? Fatter. 

After spending the summer eating the fatty pink salmon swimming through Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, it’s time to celebrate the park’s iconic brown bears (Ursus arctos). Fat Bear Week begins on Tuesday, September 22, and here is everything you need to know. 

What is Fat Bear Week?

Think March Madness, just without the basketball and significantly more bears. Fat Bear Week is a single-elimination tournament, where bear enthusiasts from around the world can vote online for their favorite chunky bear. After each round, the bear with the most votes advances until the winner is announced on September 29. According to the Katmai Conservancy, the event began as a one-day event in 2014 with 1,700 votes cast. Only 10 years later, 1.2 million votes were cast from over 100 countries.

The brown bears return to Brooks Falls for the salmon migration every year in late June, where viewers can watch them on explore.org’s livestream. There, they will feast to fatten up for the long winter ahead. By late summer, the nutritious fish will spawn and then begin to die. The bears will then move to the lower Brooks River in September and October to eat the dead and dying salmon near the river’s mouth.

Eating all of this salmon is important because the heftier the bear, the better chance they will survive their long winter hibernation. Despite being the poster species for winter hibernation, bears are not “deep hibernators,” they way that squirrels, bats, and bees are. Bears enter a state called torpor, which is an involuntary state primarily triggered by lack of food. During this time, the bears rely on stored fat reserves for energy. A torpid bear’s eating, drinking, and waste functions will cease, as its body metabolizes these stores it put on over the summer. 

When is Fat Bear Week 2026?

This year, Fat Bear Week begins on Tuesday, September 22, and a winner will be crowned on Tuesday, September 29. 

How can I vote?

Votes may be cast from noon to 9 p.m. EDT (9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ADT)

from September 22 and 29 at fatbearweek.org.

Photographs comparing the bears from earlier in the summer and later in the summer will be shown, so voters can get an idea of just how much weight the bears put on during their salmon fest. An adult male bear can go from roughly 700 pounds in the early summer to over 1,200 pounds by fall. 

Voters are also encouraged to get familiar with each bear’s life history and the unique challenges they face to survive.

Which bears are competing this year?

The 2026 Fat Bear Week Bracket will be released on Friday, September 18. 

In 2025, Bear #32 (Chunk) took the crown, despite beginning the salmon run with a freshly broken jaw. He was likely injured while fighting with another bear for a mate, but he still managed to catch plenty of fish. Chunk is known for his dominance and size, but also narrow-set eyes, dark fur, a prominent brow ridge, and a distinctive scar across his muzzle. 

How can I support Katmai’s bears?

Donations can be made to Katmai Conservancy’s Otis Fund. The Otis Fund is named after Bear #480 (Otis), who won four Fat Bear Week titles before his death around 2024.  All donations made between September 22 and October 3 will be matched by explore.org. 

What happened with the bears this summer?

This year’s livestream featured an example of how wild (and upsetting to humans) nature can be. On Tuesday, July 28, the live-cams captured a young brown bear cub being killed and eaten by an unrelated mother bear (Bear #806). The deceased cub was born this spring and the child of Bear #909, a 10-year-old brown bear. Bear #909 started the season with two cubs, but now lost both. 

On Sunday, August 2, one of Bear #335’s (Jolly) cubs died, after following three unrelated cubs up a tree. The mother of the cubs already in the tree attacked Bear #335’s cub, who did not survive the encounter. The identity of the mother bear who killed the spring cub was not confirmed. 

Following the first cub’s death, naturalist Mike Fitz and park rangers Christine Loberg and Sarah Bruce said this likely the first documented case occurring at Brooks River. While there is no one answer as to why mother bears are killing cubs, some experts suspect bear adoption, food scarcity, and fights for dominance all play a role. 

Additionally, this year also saw the cub with silver-hued fur, a cub who hopefully learned important lesson about porcupine quill safety, the unique fishing stylings of Bear #164 (Bucky Dent), and Bear #284’s (Electra) family who can “walk on water.”

The post Fat Bear Week kicks off September 22 appeared first on Popular Science.

As salmon season winds down and Fat Bear Week approaches, the famous brown bears (Ursus arctos) in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve have to get out and about while the eating is good. Bear #284 (Electra) was spotted out and about this week, looking healthy with her two cubs.

Electra is part of a well-established bear lineage in Katmai. She was born in 2008 to Bear #708 (Amelia), who was likely born to Bear #468 (Reggie). Rangers first spotted her in  2011 as a subadult. She has had at least three litters of cubs, in 2016, 2020, and 2026, respectively. Bears #901 and #384 are two of her adult offspring who have been seen in the park. This year, she had two spring cubs who have been spotted with her multiple times over the summer.

According to Katmai and explore.org naturalist Mike Fitz, one way that bear culture is similar to human culture is that their knowledge is passed down. Mother bears teach their cubs skills, and the offspring primarily learn by doing instead of through inherited instincts. Mother bears like Electra will teach their cubs about safe places to build dens, where and when to find food, and how to get it.

Fishing techniques can also be specific to each individual bear. Adult male Bear #164 (aka Bucky Dent) is known for standing at the deepest plunge pool under the cascade of Brooks Falls, where he can catch the salmon that wells up from the pool below, jump up, or come down from the falls above. Electra’s mother Amelia used to stand and walk out into the water when she was fishing, and Electra and one of her adult offspring (Bear # 901) fish the same way.

Physically, Electra is a medium-sized adult, and has a dark blond or medium-brown coat in July. By the fall, her coat typically becomes more uniformly brown. She also has a prominent shoulder hump and a tapered muzzle.

Electra made her Fat Bear Week debut in 2023, where she lost to ace-fisher bear Bucky Dent. Fat Bear Week 2026 runs from September 22 through September 29.

The post Katmai brown bear cubs learning how to ‘walk on water’ to nab salmon appeared first on Popular Science.

Japan’s bears are still causing problems. The hefty predators continue to stray from mountainous forests in search of food, putting them in direct contact with the nation’s rapidly aging and dwindling population. According to the country’s Environment Ministry, bears have killed six people across the country since April 1, while a record 13 victims died during the previous fiscal year. It’s gotten so bad that Japan called in the armed forces to help, and companies are even running out of their popular robotic wolf deterrents.

Culling strategies are reducing bear numbers, with around 14,000 killed during the last fiscal year. But in the central prefecture of Nagano on the main island of Honshū, conservationists are promoting a different approach to keeping both humans and bears safe. Using a combination of sensors, traps, and GPS monitoring, researchers are avoiding unnecessarily killing bears while improving the overall population’s wellbeing at the same time.

“By not killing too many of them, more bears survive to live out their expected lifespan. In that sense, a healthy bear population is being formed,” biologist Akiko Takii explained in a recent interview with AFP.

Takii is participating in a program with an over 30 year head start. In 1995, local authorities discovered bear numbers suddenly shrinking on Honshū, and slowly enacted new strategies like GPS monitoring and installing over 2,000 miles of fencing. But concerns for the animals have dwindled in recent years, as attacks and deaths continue to mount across Japan. 

Takii and her supporters argue that simply culling bears is not a practical, ethical, or necessarily long-term solution strategy. Instead, members of Nagano’s Shinshu Asian Black Bear Research Association are using catch-and-release tactics to monitor animal movements and keep locals out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, Takii is overseeing school outreach classes to educate children and their parents about bears, as well as humanity’s relationship to them. While a combination of culling and conservation is likely the path forward, advocates like Takii hope officials will see the added benefits of humane interventions

“I am convinced it’s safe to live with them as long as humans don’t offend them,” a school principal recently told AFP , following one of Takii’s presentations.

The post Japan’s continuing bear problems can’t be solved by culling alone appeared first on Popular Science.

We are mere weeks away from Fat Bear Week 2026, but the brown bears (Ursus arctos) gorging on salmon at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska are already showing off that beautiful bulk. Based on a recent video posted by explore.org, Bear #910 might be a major contender for this year’s competition.

Bear #910 is a female brown bear that was first spotted in 2019 at Katmai’s Brooks River. She is about 10.5-years-old, has large, blonde, floppy ears, which can help viewers pick her out of the crowd on the live cam set up in the park. 

Bear #910 is also a particularly unique mother bear. Between mid-August and October 2022, she adopted her sister Bear #909’s 2.5-year-old female yearling cub (a one- to two-year-old cub still with its mother), while she herself had a spring cub (a first-year cub that was born over the winter and emerges in the spring). An adoption like this is an exceptionally rare event in the wild, but it has also been observed in polar bears. The pair was frequently seen fishing together with their cubs throughout 2023 and 2024 and a paper on their story was published in the journal BioOne in 2025. 

Most bear mothers generally keep their litters separated, and this year’s season was an example of why they tend to stick to themselves. On Tuesday, July 28, the live-cams captured a young brown bear cub being killed and eaten by an unrelated mother bear (Bear #806). The deceased cub was born this spring, and was one of Bear #909’s cubs. Bear 909 started this season with two cubs, but has now lost both. 

On Sunday, August 2, one of Bear #335’s (also known as Jolly) cubs died, after following three unrelated cubs up a tree. The mother of the cubs already in the tree attacked Bear #335’s cub, who did not survive the encounter. The identity of the mother bear who killed the spring cub was not confirmed. 

Following the first cub’s death, naturalist Mike Fitz and park rangers Christine Loberg and Sarah Bruce hosted a chat about the incident. The team said that while infanticide by female adults does occur, this is likely the first documented case occurring at Brooks River. While there is no single answer as to why mother bears are killing cubs, some experts suspect bear adoption, food scarcity, and fights for dominance all play a role. 

During Fat Bear Week 2025, she lost to Bear #856 in the second round of voting. Voting this year. The competition this year is scheduled to begin at the end of September.

The post History-making mother bear could be big Fat Bear Week 2026 contender appeared first on Popular Science.

Macrobiological features have been cited as irreducibly complex, including animal joints and the trap mechanisms of carnivorous plants, even the cell itself.

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