Alaska Fat Bears live stream unfiltered. This can be brutal.
One of the largest and most dominant bears on the Brooks River in Katmai National Park and Preserve attacked a cub on July 27, horrifying onlookers online. The cub appeared to be severely injured and seemed to improve slightly after a few days, but eventually died in the river. This event fully reveals the natural world of bears and shows their wild side.
“We get to see them in their happy moments,” Mike Fitz, a former Katmai park ranger and current resident naturalist at explore.org, said in an online chat. “However, webcams are live and the footage is uncensored. We also see bears facing hardship, hunger, injury, pain, and even death.”
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The bears live in remote areas of the Alaska Peninsula, where tourists arrive by small seaplane and use radio transmitters to send messages around the world. Katmai’s bears gained fame during the park’s annual Fat Bear Week competition, which celebrates the success of these hardy animals in the harsh wilderness. They must devour salmon throughout the summer to store enough fat to survive the long winter famine while hibernating. That’s why fat bears are healthy bears.
In July, bears congregate in the park’s Brooks River to take advantage of the incredible abundance of salmon—bringing these usually solitary animals into crowded, close quarters. This is where the attack took place.
Grazer, the famous female bear who was last year’s Fat Bear Week winner, was fishing atop a waterfall with her two cubs (meaning they were just born this year). This was a somewhat risky endeavor as the current was strong. Soon both cubs fell down the waterfall and one of them passed near 32 “Chunk” a large male bear, an animal in its prime whose dominance provided it with its most productive Fishing spots. For unknown reasons, Chunk chased and attacked the cub, as shown below. He caught the bear in his mouth.
But the drama doesn’t end there. Glazer sprinted to protect her cub.
Mix and match speed of light
In this live screenshot, the cub appears to be in Chunk’s mouth while Grazer (left) actively tries to scare Chunk.
Image source: NPS/explore.org
Glazer is a particularly aggressive bear who has previously attacked bears that came close to her cubs and even mauled bears that tried to steal fish. It was this fearless aggression, faced with a dominant bear hundreds of pounds larger than her, that might have saved the cub from sudden and fatal injury. Glazer forced Chunk back numerous times.
“She’s brave – she’s defensive.”
“She continues to fight back,” Naomi Boak, who covers bears for the Katmai Conservancy, a group that supports national parks, said in a live chat. “She’s brave – she’s defensive.”
You can watch the encounter from 12:20 to 14:30 below.
Although the cub appeared to be severely injured after the attack – howling, licking its paws and barely moving – the cub held on in the aftermath, although it eventually succumbed to its injuries. On August 2, webcam observers saw the dead cub floating over the waterfall. The lifeless animal passed directly in front of Glazer.
Even so, the cubs try to survive. It survived the encounter and reached the relative safety of the river bank, where it attempted to recover. “The cubs are tough,” Fitz told Mashable via email. Katmai pups face many threats—attacks, disease, drowning, lack of nutrition—and the survival rate for Katmai pups is about 34 percent.
“The cubs are so strong.”
We will never know why Chunk took the opportunity to attack the cubs. Before the pup crashed, Chuck expressed no interest in Glazer’s family; instead, he focused on catching a 4,500-calorie sockeye salmon. Large males have killed bears on live streams before. It might just be a knee-jerk reaction. It’s possible that, like other cases of bear cub killing, Chuck intended to reintroduce an herbivore that might not have had cubs into estrus, a form of sexual selection (although given his previous Not being interested in family groups is unreasonable). Bulk probably felt like he was competing with Glazer’s family for food. Maybe that’s why we humans can’t understand or imagine.
The Katmai bears will continue their fight for survival on Bear Cam. This is a dynamic view of a largely unconstrained domain. This is a world that is both beautiful and cruel.
“National parks like Katmai exist to protect wild landscapes and ecosystem processes,” Fitz said. “This includes grand spectacles like bear fishing at Brooks Falls as well as the harsh realities of nature.”
Updated: August 5, 2024 at 12:19 pm ET This story was originally published on August 3, 2024, and has been updated to add new details about the cub’s death. Mark Kaufman contributed to this update.
