To rangers at Katmai National Park in southern Alaska, she is bear number 435. To fans who watch live-streams of the Brooks River, she is known as Holly, and is a highly proficient salmon hunter. Holly, a brown bear, has now won a grander accolade. She has been voted fattest creature on the river after a seven-day, Pop Idol-style contest, Fat Bear Week, that pitted 12 of the river’s most obese bears against one another in head-to-head knock-out rounds decided by a popular vote online. The contest is meant to showcase the habitat and the bears’ annual push to put on weight before hibernation, but as it gathered an audience on the park’s live camera feed, and drew tens of thousands of voters, it quickly…

Source: The Times October 09, 2019 23:03 UTC