Otis crowned the largest bear in Katmai Park, Alaska

With 51,230 votes in favor, the brown-haired grizzly nicknamed the 480 Otis snatched the crown from his fiercest rival, the undeserved dark brown bear 151 Walker, by 44,834 votes.

This year, we had to choose between 12 grizzly bears, each more stocky than the next and all residents of Katmai National Park, Alaska.

The competition, which is very popular on the web, is a project co-organized by Park and ONG non Governmental Organization Partners, the Katmai Conservancy and Explore.org.

Wildlife fans have submitted their votes online, in several rounds of the competition held between September 29 and October 5. To help them with the difficult choice, the site provided photos and videos of bears eating in a waterfall on the Brooks River, a place rich in salmon.

Thanks to its longevity, Otis has become a subsidiary of Fat Bear Week. It was first spotted in the fall in 2001, and won the first edition of the competition in 2014. It was then revisited in 2016 and 2017.

The Katmai Conservancy also gave its name to the fundraiser. Last year, the Otis Fund raised more than $230,000 for research, education, and bear conservation projects in the park.

About 25 years old, Otis can no longer compete with smaller, stronger bears for the best hunting spots, according to park officials. He lost two of his fangs and the others were worn out.

However, when it comes to salmon, Otis is surprisingly cunning, Explore.org reports.

While the Otis sometimes appears to be dozing or not paying attention to its surroundings, most of the time it focuses on the water, which allows it to catch a relatively large number of salmon.

Brown bears feeding in Brooks Falls

Katmai Park covers an area of ​​4 million hectares on the Alaskan Peninsula in the southwest of the state. The park is home to about 2,200 brown bears that can weigh up to 450 kg or more.

Bears feed on salmon that comes from Bristol Bay, where the world’s largest salmon migrations occur.

If the competition makes you smile, it aims above all else to make the public aware of the phenomenon of hibernation. Bears really need to gain weight, as they can lose a third of their weight during the winter period, according to park officials.

Even if the letter F.Bear week Over, park officials claimed on Twitter that Otis Continue to spend extravagantly.