【Korea Archives】

Welcome to Fat Bear Week 2021!Katmai National Park and Korea ArchivesPreserve’s brown bears spent the summer gorging on 4,500-calorie salmon, and they've transformed into rotund giants, some over 1,000 pounds. The Alaskan park is holding its annual playoff-like competition for the fattest of the fat bears (you canvote onlinebetween Sept. 29 through Oct. 5). Mashable will be following all the ursine activity.

---

Otis is an aging bear, but a profoundly wise one.

The Katmai bear, numbered 480, is around a quarter-century old with missing teeth. He arrived at the salmon-rich Brooks River, home to the livestreamed explore.org webcams, a month or so late this year. He looked gaunt.

But Otis, famously successful at catching fish with a tried-and-true, unflashy fishing strategy, rapidly persevered. Over the course of around seven weeks, he transformed from a bear with a visible ribcage to one of the fattest of the fat bears.

"He's certainly made up for lost time," Mike Fitz, a former Katmai park ranger and currently a resident naturalist for explore.org, told Mashable. "He's gained an incredible amount of body mass in about seven weeks."

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

All the fat bears have impressive summer transformations. But the images below show his particularly stunning 2021 change.

Otis' impressive summer transformation. Credit: n. Boak / C. Spencer / Nps / explore.org

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Otis clearly knows how to survive the long, harsh Alaskan winter hibernation, where bears subsist off their fat stores. An old brown bear is 20, and Otis has already far eclipsed that. He has a stationary approach to fishing, where he sits for hours in the same spot beneath the waterfall, as opposed to dashing in the water or standing atop the waterfall for leaping salmon like many other bears. Some might interpret this as Otis acting lethargic or disengaged.

But no. It's wise. He wastes little energy while catching bounties of calorie-rich fish over the long run.

"I like to describe Otis as a master of energy economics."

"Otis is extremely patient when fishing," Fitz previously told Mashable in 2019. "I like to describe Otis as a master of energy economics. He uses his patience and experience to make a huge profit in calories while expending little energy."

Otis' profit is often huge. He's a three-time Fat Bear Week champion, though other formidable bears have bested him over the past few years.

SEE ALSO: The female fat bear that's as dominant as the big, bad male bears

Otis' first Fat Bear Week match-up is happening Thursday, Sept. 30. You can vote on fatbearweek.org, or this Woobox link if the primary site — due to voting popularity impacting the page — is down.

Your vote matters.

• Tech
• Digital Culture
• Games
• Deals
• Science
• Life
• Social Good
• Shopping

• No Time for a Negative Peace
• Mike Pence's pro
• This one tweet explains that truly bizarre Oscars Best Picture mixup perfectly
• Hulu + Live TV is now $55 so you might as well just get cable
• Best iPad deal: Save $132 on Apple iPad (10th Gen)
• Jerk alligator steals a huge fish off a little boy's line
• A private equity firm now runs .org, the domain for nonprofits
• 17 perfect gifts for a zero waste holiday
• 'The Last of Us' Season 2, episode 4: Why Ellie sings 'Take on Me'
• Microsoft is scaling back Android and iOS versions of the Cortana app

• 'The Hong Kong Massacre' wears its influences proudly, to great effect
• Finding humor in an absurd election
• How Waze kills dead zones in tunnels for all commuters
• Venom stans fight Ted Bundy stans for wanting to f*ck an IRL monster
• Why Apple wants you spending more time in stores even if you're not buying
• How Google's Jigsaw is trying to detoxify the internet
• Google, online ad industry accused of abusing intimate personal data in GDPR complaint
• Joe Biden and Adam Devine go undercover at a college party for an important cause
• This 'Super Mario'
• Gmail's app is about to look totally different

• Exceptionally rare radio sources detected in the distant universe
• 'Joker' is the first R
• Your guide to the 2017 Oscars, in highly accurate charts
• Please, for the love of God, stop saying 'Hidden Fences'
• AMD Radeon RX 550 + Intel Pentium G4560
• Watch this 9
• Disney XD sprinkles a same
• Hulu's ‘Dollface’ depicts female friendship at its most basic: Review
• Put Me In, Coach!
• This one tweet explains that truly bizarre Oscars Best Picture mixup perfectly

• NYT Connections hints and answers for May 10: Tips to solve 'Connections' #699.
• Halle Berry apparently relaxed after the Oscars with a quick skinny dip
• Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling recreated their 'Mickey Mouse Club' days at the Oscars
• The Oscars red carpet was its own live action 'Beauty and the Beast'
• Your 'wrong person' texts may be linked to Myanmar warlord
• 'Noelle' delivers relentless Christmas chaos for Disney+: Review
• What to expect from Instagram's glitzy portrait studio at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party
• How to predict the president's next bogus tweet: Just watch Fox News
• A worthless juicer and a Gipper-branded server
• Watch this 9