\n A live camera lets voters follow along with the bears as they forage for salmon in a last-gasp chance to pack on the pounds ahead of their upcoming winter hibernation.\n <\/p>\n
\n After one week of voting, bears competed against each other until only two challengers remained \u2013 numbers 856 and 32.\n <\/p>\n
\n This year\u2019s winner is bear 32, AKA Chunk.\n <\/p>\n
\n In addition to his impressive girth, Chunk\u2019s Cinderella story appealed to voters as he suffered from a jaw injury that threatened to derail his salmon-eating activities. He defeated bear 602, affectionately known as \u201cFlotato,\u201d by roughly 70%-30% in the semis to secure his place in the final.\n <\/p>\n
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Fat Bear Week: Bulky bears tip the scales for bragging rights\n <\/p>\n
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Fat Bear Week: Bulky bears tip the scales for bragging rights<\/p>\n
4:27 <\/p>\n
\n Meanwhile, bear 856 beat last year\u2019s reigning champion, 128 Grazer, by around 68%-32% in the semis. Grazer was the last female bear left in the competition.\n <\/p>\n
\n Bear 856 lost out to Chunk 60.2%-39.8% in the final round of voting, which was held Tuesday. The final total was 96,350 votes for Chunk and 63,725 for 856.\n <\/p>\n
\n Beyond the fun of selecting a chubby champion, Fat Bear Week is also an opportunity to educate people about brown bears and their habitat in Alaska.\n <\/p>\n
\n The contest, which began in 2014, spotlights the work rangers do at Katmai, the fourth-largest national park in the US.\n <\/p>\n
\n To survive Alaska\u2019s punishing winters, brown bears spend the season hibernating in their dens.\n <\/p>\n
\n The more weight they put on ahead of that, the more likely they are to survive the season. That goes double for pregnant bears, who usually enter their dens earlier than their peers.\n <\/p>\n
\n As Katmai\u2019s website notes, \u201cfat bears are successful bears,\u201d so it\u2019s safe to say all the park\u2019s brown bears are winners.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chunk will now have his photo added to the Fat Bear Week Hall of Champions, where previous winners are honored for their achievements.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Yankees and the Red Sox. Celtic and Rangers. Real Madrid and Barcelona. In a competition bear-ly more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-184065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}