VANCOUVER - The votes are in for an annual contest to name the fattest bear in an Alaskan national park, and the reigning champion is a hulking heavyweight known as Holly.
Staff at Katmai National Park and Preserve set up March Madness-style brackets pitting several rotund bears against each other two at a time. Holly beat bears 909, Grazer and Lefty in Facebook voting to be crowned the "Queen of Corpulence."
"She is fat. She is fabulous … All hail Holly whose healthy heft will help her hibernate until the spring," the park wrote in a Facebook post celebrating her win.
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The park shared pre-hibernation transformation pictures of each bear, showing how they can wake up scrawny and pack on the pounds in a few short months by stuffing themselves full of salmon.
Park staff affectionately named the fish Fat Bear Week's "spawnsor," adding 56 million Pacific salmon made their way up rivers in Alaska's Bristol Bay.
