A salmon chomping beast has been crowned the winner of Fat Bear Week.
747 - who is named after the famously large plane - scooped the prestigious gong during Alaska’s annual battle of the heavyweights.
The bear, one of more than 2,200 brown bears roaming Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, was victorious on Tuesday after a week of frenzied online voting.
Winner 747 was a worthy champion, the park said in a statement.
“This year he really packed on the pounds, looking like he was fat enough to hibernate in July and yet continuing to eat until his belly seemed to drag along the ground by late September,” the park said.
Fat Bear Week pits 12 bears against each other in playoff-style brackets.
Bear fans compared photos and voted online for their favorites from last Wednesday to Tuesday night.
Katmai’s bears can grow to well over 1,000 pounds (453 kg) from summer feasting.
They pile on the pounds by eating 100,000 calories a day - as much as 41 large pepperoni Domino's pizzas.
For way for comparison, an average human male would provide 126,000 calories if eaten whole.
The porking up is essential as bears can lose a third of their body weight during hibernation.
That makes Fat Bear Week about “survival of the fattest,” as the Park Service puts it.
Katmai, a 4 million-acre park sprawling over mountains, lakes, streams and coastline, is famous for having the world’s densest population of brown bears, the coastal version of grizzlies.
Within Katmai, the Brooks River is a prime place for brown bears to feast.
There, bears congregate in summer and fall to snatch salmon swimming upstream to spawning grounds.
This year, the river was more of a bear paradise than usual, thanks to a record salmon run, said Naomi Doak, a media ranger at Katmai.
What was scarce along the Brooks River was people.
Peak summer normally sees about 500 visitors a day but with the coronavirus pandemic, that was down to 50 to 100, she said.
“The combination of the big salmon run and fewer people, this has really handed the river to the bears,” she said.
