Fat Bear Week’s Tender King Is Named Backpack

Katmai National Park and Preserve’s annual Fat Bear Week is kind of like the Super Bowl for gay people who love animals. Every year, we huddle around our laptops to find out just how much salmon these adorable Alaskan carnivores can devour over the course of a few months, and appreciate just how big they’ve become. But this year’s winner, a brown bear named Backpack who earned the coveted title earlier this week, is one of the most special.Backpack, according to the National Park Service’s official biography, was “often seen play-fighting with other young males when he was a younger adult.” Ah, yes, play-fighting, an elaborate ritual constructed to touch the fur of other boars — which is the term a male bear, in case you didn’t know. He got his name because he had an injured paw as a cub, and was “often seen riding on the back of his sow,” according to the NPS. It’s giving “mama’s bear” — my words, not the NPS’s.Combine those biographical details with Backpack’s reputation as a “gentle giant” and I’d be tempted to anthropomorphize him and speculate that this hefty bear might be a little light in the paws. But Backpack’s fans have exclusively documented him mating with lady bears on his Wikipedia page. So he’s probably just a straight king with a kind way about him, but we stan him anyway.But the truly precious detail in Backpack’s story is the fact that the mother whose back he rode on is also a Fat Bear Week Winner. Holly netted the win in 2019, which is even more impressive when you consider the struggles she had been through. As the NPS bio for Holly notes, “Motherhood is especially challenging in bear world. Sows with cubs are always single moms, male bears play no role in child rearing.” Left with the kids, the NPS notes, whenever mama bears have a litter of cubs, they have to spend years raising them before getting back to what they do best: eating a ridiculous amount of fish. In her tournament-winning year, Ho