I know what you are thinking… and no, this video of a dozen-plus bears all fishing one part of the river was not made with artificial intelligence.
You really have to keep your head on a swivel in the modern age of the internet and social media. It seems like every other thing you come across is AI-generated, and when people saw this video of online, they thought it was too good to be true. But it’s 100% authentic, and it comes from the bear haven that is Katmai National Park.
There are live cams everywhere there, and one of the more popular streams is the one that captured this video.
Katmai National Park is home to an estimated 2,200 bears, and you can see a plethora of them in action in this incredible video. It was actually one of the livestreams that captured this feeding frenzy at Brooks Falls, and the video is now going viral online.
Speaking of Katmai National Park, the sprawling area in Alaska is home to the famous “Fat Bear Week,” which runs each year from late September to early October. The special week is hosted by the Katmai National Park and Preserve Explore.org and the Katmai Conservancy. The goal of Fat Bear Week is to showcase the Park’s brown bear population that attracts tourists from around the world to watch the bears fish for salmon as they fatten up for winter.
And fat bear enthusiasts (which is all of us) have the ability to tune into Explore.org’s livestream to watch the bears year round.
Though we’re obviously a couple of months away from the actual “Fat Bear Week,” it looks like some of them are getting a head start on the contest. That’s no surprise, as the the NPS.gov site says that this time of year often turns into a feeding frenzy at Brooks Falls:
“From late June until late July, watch for sockeye (red) salmon jumping the falls and dominant male bears competing for fishing spots. Later in the summer and fall, a few bears may also fish at Brooks Falls. As many as 50+ bears have been seen fishing at Brooks Falls at the same time.”
If you zoomed out enough on this video, I’m sure you could count up close to 50.
All we can see in the frame of this clip – posted by Explore.org – is a little over a dozen. The multitude of bears came together to create quite the gauntlet for salmon trying to pass through. You can even see a couple of bears sitting right in the middle of the river and chowing down on what they caught.
Though bears will eat just about anything, they might not have a snack that they favor more than salmon. The large animals will often spend hours fishing, and are normally successful in their endeavors (their sharp claws and quick reflexes make them efficient anglers). Some bears have been known to catch and eat over 30 salmon in one day.
One place where bears know they are going to catch some salmon is Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. You can see what Explore.org called a “Bearapalooza” below:
