Salute 480 Otis, Our Four-Time Fat Bear King

It’s official: 480 Otis is 2021’s burliest bear. Bow down.

On Tuesday night time, 480 Otis was declared the winner of Fat Bear Week, a web-based competitors held to have a good time brown bears’ pre-hibernation weight acquire in Katmai National Park and Preserve. He beat out the runner-up, 151 Walker, by almost 7,000 votes.

“The people have spoken! The portly patriarch of paunch persevered to pulverize the Baron of Beardonkadonk in the final match of #FatBearWeek 2021,” the park stated on Twitter. Exactly.

All fats bears are great, and I’d have been thrilled to see any of the corpulent contenders win the competitors. But 480 Otis wasn’t my primary selection. In truth, he wasn’t even in my high 5 within the bracket match the park places on every year.

The bear after my coronary heart on the bracket was a moderately unconventional selection: I used to be rooting for 132’s spring cub, a younger bear who earned his place within the bracket by successful this yr’s inaugural Fat Bear Junior competitors. He was within the competitors for the primary time, and had he received, he would have been the youngest bear to ever put on the crown.

480 Otis is a really completely different type of winner. He’s about 25 years outdated, making him one of many eldest bears within the park. He’s not solely been in earlier years’ competitions, he’s additionally received all of it 3 times, together with within the first-ever bracket in 2014. Otis has extremely supportive and vocal backers on Facebook pages and the contest’s homepage, and because of his earlier victories, he’s well-known to all who care about Fat Bear Week.

Incredibly, there’s a fat bear wiki. Otis’ entry on what I’m positive is the definitive supply of all issues portly and ursine calls him the “Master of Patience and Efficiency.” (You ought to severely go to the wiki if just for all of the superb pictures and movies of Otis doing every thing from frolicking to getting hiccups all through the years. Also… this.) In 2016, the wiki notes he misplaced two of his canine tooth, which “somewhat inhibited his ability to “high-grade”–to select the fattiest elements of the salmon (pores and skin, mind, and roe)–however didn’t cease him from placing on the required weight for winter survival.” It’s actually an inspiration, particularly given the stakes.

“Bears arrive in July looking thin and frail,” discover.org founder Charlie Annenberg Weingarten stated in an emailed assertion. “Now as winter approaches they are rotund and ready to retire into hibernation. It is a true success story.”

Otis was a protected selection however a stable one, and after this yr, maybe that’s what we wanted. 2021 has been a yr of uncertainty, from ever-changing covid-19 protocols to questioning if the world will simply at all times be on hearth from right here on out. In all that turbulence, a stalwart of the competitors is the king we want. Otis, bear of durability and stability, we salute you.