Fat Bear Week postponed after fatal fight caught on livestream camera

Public voters are invited to watch the bears fatten up to survive the winter on live webcams. The competition will then allow fans to crown the bear that has gained the most weight in preparation for hibernation.

But this year the iconic event was postponed after a brown bear was killed by another bear in the live camera feed.

The fatal fight took place around 9:30 a.m. at the mouth of the Brooks River in Katmai, Alaska, as organizers prepared for the start of Fat Bear Week.

The two bears could be seen fighting in the river on livestream footage. An adult male named Bear 469 and an adult female named Bear 402 engaged in a long and violent battle for over 20 minutes.

Stunned onlookers watched the violent brawl between the two animals – which ultimately ended with Bear 469 killing Bear 402 and dragging her body to shore.

“An unusual thing”

Organizers of Fat Bear Week 2024 decided to postpone the unveiling of this year's participants following the disturbing incident, announcing the participants a day late.

“Today a bear killed another bear by the river,” Mike Fritz, the resident naturalist for the webcam company Explore.org, said in a conversation at Monday's livestream event, which took place in place of the planned unveiling. “It was captured live on the webcams and we felt we couldn’t move forward with unveiling our Fat Bear Week series without addressing this situation first.”

The fatal incident served as a grim reminder of the animals' predatory instincts – with Weber suspecting that Bear 469's killing of Bear 402 was caused by starvation.

“We know at this time of year that bears are in this state of hyperphagia and eat everything they can,” Weber explains.

“I don’t know why a bear would want to expend so much energy killing another bear for food. While it is unusual for a bear to chase another bear, it is not completely impossible. So it’s hard to say how this started.”

Photo credit: Header photo licensed through NPS/Explore.org.