Fat bear champ is still gobbling fish and getting fatter

Otis has probably devoured some 25,000 fish in his life. Maybe considerably more.

Weeks after winning the 2021 Fat Bear Week contest — a pre-hibernation celebration of these bears succeeding in the wild — the livestreamed explore.org cameras in Katmai National Park and Preserve captured Otis continuing to successfully catch salmon on Oct. 21, deep into the Alaskan fall. Many Katmai bears are about to hibernate, if they haven’t already.

The salmon Otis caught is reddish in color, meaning the creature is nearing the end of its life and Alaska’s famous salmon run is waning. Salmon absorb their scales (revealing the red flesh underneath) when they’re preparing to reproduce. Soon after, they die.

Otis is still filling up on salmon to survive the long, harsh winter hibernation. He’ll subsist off his fat stores, and lose about one-third of his weight. But he’s also preparing for the spring of 2022, when he emerges from his den.

“In Katmai, there is typically little food available for bears in spring, especially early and mid-spring,” explained Mike Fitz, a former Katmai park ranger and currently a resident naturalist for explore.org. “Any extra fat that Otis has when he emerges from hibernation will be needed in springtime, which is an extended season of hunger for most Katmai bears.”

You can see Otis’ late October catch below:

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The video shows Otis’ unique — and profoundly successful — fishing style. Otis exerts very little energy when fishing. He doesn’t walk around. He doesn’t dash. He stays mostly solitary at the river’s edge, waiting for fish to swim by. And he grows impressively fat.

“I like to describe Otis as a master of energy economics. He uses his patience and experience to make a huge profit in calories while expending little energy,” Fitz told Mashable in 2019.

“I like to describe Otis as a master of energy economics.”

Even though Otis is missing teeth and might be the oldest of Katmai’s famous fat bears (at some 25 years of age), his fishing prowess still enabled him to fatten up in 2021. Otis even arrived at Katmai’s salmon-filled Brooks River late this summer. But as the image comparison below demonstrates, he transformed from a gaunt bear to a fat bear in just seven weeks.

Otis’ impressive 2021 transition.
Credit: N. Boak / C. Spencer / NPS

We wish you a successful hibernation, Otis.