It’s Fat Bear Week!

An annual (as chosen by the fans) competition to find the bear who had the most summer gains in preparation for their winter downtime. As they won’t be coming out to forage during the winter months, the bears need to spend the summer months not only regaining that which they lost the previous winter but also shoring up their reserves for the coming winter. This means finding foods that are rich (fatty) and plentiful – salmon happen to tick both of these boxes and are one of the highly sought after snacks over the summer time.

Read More: Fat Bear Week

Check out the before and after shots of these cuddly teddies below!

Fat Bear Week 2021: Before-and-After Pictures of the Contenders

Although this year’s winner has already been voted for (all hail Otis) there is always next year to pick out your bracket and vote for the bear that you think deserves the honours of being the Fat Bear Champion.

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Tanya Strydom is a PhD student at the Université de Montréal, mostly focusing on how we can use machine learning and artificial intelligence in ecology. Current research interests include (but are not limited to) predicting ecological networks, the role species traits and scale in ecological networks, general computer (and maths) geekiness, and a (seemingly) ever growing list of side projects. Tweets (sometimes related to actual science) can be found @TanyaS_08.