'Backpack' declared Alaska's Fat Bear Week winner

After what the US National Parks Service described as a "battle of size, skill, snack acquisition, and strategic loafing", a brown bear known as 89 Backpack has won the annual Fat Bear Week competition.

Key points

• Backpack's wideness narrowly defeated a bear known only as 910, earning 103, 344 votes to 910's 98, 253 in the final round of the competition.
• His mother Holly was the 2019 Fat Bear Week winner.
• The National Parks Service thanked the 16 bears who "involuntarily participated" in the competition, now in its thirteenth year.
• Last year, over 1.7 million votes were cast from more than 100 countries to crown the competition's heavyweight champion.
• One person remarked she felt that Bear 910, a female who raised both her biological cub and an adopted niece, was a larger bear all around.

Backpack's wideness narrowly defeated a bear known only as 910, earning 103, 344 votes to 910's 98, 253 in the final round of the competition. It is run by the Katmai National Park in Alaska.

For context, the National Parks Service thanked the 16 bears who "involuntarily participated" in the competition, now in its thirteenth year.

Backpack, who was described by one supporter as having both the "chonk and the badonk", will shortly enter hibernation. It can last up to six months.

His mother Holly was the 2019 Fat Bear Week winner. As a cub, of climbing onto Holly's back when she waded through the park's salmon-filled Brooks River, backpack's name derives not from what another supporter described as the "light bulb shape" of his body, but his habit. Another supporter described him as being a "big fuzzy boy".

But Backpack was not without his detractors. One person remarked she felt that Bear 910, a female who raised both her biological cub and an adopted niece, was a "larger bear all around. Backpack just has a bigger booty".

While a voter commented, "She round, she thick my girl 910 got my vote.", "I just feel like 910 really put in the work this year, " another 910 fan wrote on the park's Facebook page.

Notably, the finalists' latest weights have not yet been made public. But adult male brown bears average up to 408kg in mid-summer and often pack on the equivalent of 25% of their body weight by autumn. The largest males can weigh more than 540kg.

Females are smaller but can reach weights of over 300kg. Cubs are born weighing roughly half a kilogram.

"During hibernation, bears do not eat or drink and lose one-third of their body weight. Their winter survival depends on accumulating ample fat reserves before entering the den, " organisers wrote.

From June until mid October, the bears gorge on food, including salmon caught with their jaws or paws.

Backpack's biography notes his "quiet toughness has allowed him to find his niche alongside the biggest bears at Brooks River".

Taken together, the developments around ' Backpack' declared Alaska' s Fat Bear Week winner point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.