Fat Bear Week winner crowned after cheating scandal

After a six-day battle and vast amounts of salmon, Fat Bear Week has a winner.

Brown bear 747, tipping the scales at an estimated 1,400lbs (635kg), won 68,105 votes, beating Bear 901 with 56,876 votes.

The result marks an end to Fat Bear Week 2022, which saw people from around the world vote for the fattest bruin at Alaska's Katmai National Park.

The chow down spotlights the park's famous brown bears as they feed in preparation for winter hibernation.

"Ultimately, 747 ripped apart the salmon - and the competition - to seize his 2nd crown as the 2022 Champion," the park tweeted after Tuesday's vote.

But Bear 747 nearly didn't make it to the final because of an unprecedented case of voter fraud in the semi-finals that was quickly corrected by officials.

"It appears someone has decided to spam the Fat Bear Week poll, but fortunately it is easy for us to tell which votes are fraudulent," tweeted Katmai National Park on Sunday.

Since that minor hiccup, it's been smooth sailing for the eighth annual Fat Bear Week - an extravaganza that celebrates the fearsome bruins prowling Katmai National Park's eight million acre reserve, and that educates the public about how the animals thrive in nature.

To prepare for winter hibernation, each bear eats around 500lbs (225kg) of salmon from the park's Brooks River during the summer.

Some get rather chunky in that timeframe, becoming nearly unrecognisable from when they first emerged out of last season's hibernation.

Viewers from around the world tune in through live cameras placed around the river to watch the hungry bears accumulate a "preponderance of pudge", say the organisers. They then cast a vote for their favourite in an online bracket that pits the bears against one another.

Voting opened on 5 October and officially closed on Tuesday evening.

In the finals were Bear 747, an exceptionally large animal that was crowned as the winner of Fat Bear Week in 2020. He was up against bear Bear 901, a younger female bear that also piled on the pounds this season.

Bear 747 was first identified by Katmai park staff in 2004. Back then, he was a young up-and-comer that was unable to compete with more seasoned rivals for prime fishing locations.

Since then, Bear 747 has become one of the largest brown bears on earth.

He is known to be an efficient fisher. This year, he fished almost every day at Brooks River between late June and early September, and was the river's dominant bear for much of the late summer.

His opponent, Bear 901, has never won Fat Bear Week, but her growth this year has been rather noticeable.

A young female adult, Bear 901 has been working on refining her fishing and social skills, and is known to be a no-nonsense defender of her fishing territory.

Bear 901 may also be expecting her first litter of cubs in the winter.

In order to be healthy enough to give birth, she has to put on as much weight as possible during the summer months - a big motivator for her growth this season, say experts.