Did You Celebrate Fat Bear Week? These Minnesota Bears Are Pretty Chonky!

File this one under things I didn't know was a thing. Last week was fat bear week, a week where fat bears are celebrated as they prepare to hunker down and hibernate over the winter. The week originated in Alaska, but one Minnesota organization celebrated in its own way last week, and it was pretty awesome to see!

The Voyageurs Wolf Project shared last week on its social media pages the largest most jolly-looking bears they could find on their trail cameras. It also just happened to be Fat Bear Week up in Alaska! Check out all of these chonky Minnesota bears!

 

According to the Minnesota DNR, Minnesota is home to only one type of bear, the Black Bear, which has a pretty big area here in Minnesota that it calls home.

You can usually see where bears in Minnesota have been spotted outside their 'normal' region, but when it's bear hunting season the map appears blank, which makes sense. You can see that map here.

Central Minnesota, well portions of it, are not known as normally being home to black bears, but the Minnesota DNR states that the "black bear range has been slowly expanding southward and westward" which would put the Saint Cloud area in the range in the next few years into the next decade.

For more information on what you should do if you encounter a bear in the wild, you can head here.

Fat Bear Week started up in Alaska and according to Explore.org "Some of the largest brown bears on Earth make their home at Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska. Brown bears get fat to survive and Fat Bear Week is an annual tournament celebrating their success in preparation for winter hibernation."