🚨’Fat Bear Week scandal’🚨: Spam bots target beloved park competition with fake votes
Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect name of a bear advancing to the next round.
Fat Bear Week was rocked by a scandal this week as spam bots tried to get in on the action and cast fake votes.
The annual competition allows community members to vote for their favorite big bear in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.
“Like bears stuff their face with fish, our ballot box, too, has been stuffed,” the park wrote on its Facebook page Sunday. “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.”
The park said the fraudulent votes came in for Holly. The park threw out the fake votes and updated the day’s totals, advancing bear 747 to the next round with 37,940 votes.
Fat Bear Week 2022 isn’t just fun and games. For these bears, it’s ‘all about survival.’
How to vote: 2022 Fat Bear Week is here. See which bears will compete to be named the chonkiest.
The competition started in 2014 and began on Oct. 5 this year and ends Tuesday. Voting opens at 9 a.m. PDT and 12 p.m. EDT at explore.org/fat-bear-week.
Organizers said the contest is a fun way to celebrate fat bears and Katmai’s thriving ecosystem, plus educate animal lovers about the challenges bears face.
For the competition, rangers pit the bears against one another in March Madness-style voting rounds. The public decides which bear advances to each round by voting online.
Bear 747 is the largest bear known to use Brooks River and was crowned the Fat Bear Champion in 2020. He is now in the running to compete against another finalist, an unnamed bear called 901.
Bear 901, first identified as a 2½-year-old in 2018, doesn’t like to “play fight” like the other young bears and is independent, assertive and occasionally mischievous.
Fitz, from Explore.org, said the contest is based on honesty. The organization is all for a “good-natured debate between people on which bears they think is most deserving,” but the most important part isn’t necessarily who wins. The bears get no rewards, extra fish or anything of the sort.
“They’re wild animals living their best life,” he said. “It’s the opportunity to share the stories of the individual bears and consider the different ways that they survive in their environment, why they get fat to survive. As long as we’re staying on focus … we’re sending the right message.”
Contributing: Jordan Mendoza