‘World’s fattest bear’? Are we talking about a competition run by a national park or my damn PornHub search history??? But seriously, folks. (It’s both.)
In addition to the other thing, the World’s Fattest Bear competition is one run annually by Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, and they have chosen their winner: the numerically named 409 Beadnose.
[jwplayer gvkTjsCy]
Far from being the body-shaming exercise you might assume it to be, the competition is a celebration of bears’ wonderful ability to get chunky as hell in order to survive their hibernation period. From their Facebook page:
Bears must eat one year’s worth of food in six short months to survive hibernation, and 409 has excelled at that. Her radiant rolls were deemed by the voting public to be this year’s most fabulous flab. Our chubby champ has a few more weeks to chow down on lingering salmon carcasses before she heads up the mountains to dig herself a den and savor her victory.
The prize for this incredible achievement? “Stronger chances of living through the winter.” Slightly underwhelming but, at the same time, a pretty dope thing to have.
The metrics that you might expect play a role in this contest are nowhere to be seen (weight, bear BMI [BBMI]), but instead it’s done by votes on social media for which bear appears to be the chubbiest. In the final bracket, Beadnose (named for her upturned nose) beat out the even more numerically named 747:
Beadnose struck a resounding victory, receiving around 6800 likes, compared to 747’s roughly 3100. Not even a contest, really.
The people at Katmai obviously have a lot of fun with this, as you can probably tell from posts like this:
We here at PEDESTRIAN.TV offer our most sincere congratulations to 409 Beadnose and wish her the best of luck throughout the coming winter.
You can check out what Katmai’s bears are up to on their network of live bear cams, which are honestly just the best.
