Explore.org announced on Sunday (Oct 9) that there has been a cheating scandal during the “Fat Bear Week” competition and here are all the details about it.
The first thing you should know is, there have been two bears running very close in the race to victory and have made it to the semi-finals.
Last year’s champion was the bear tagged as number 747, and the rising star competitor looking to be the new champion, is bear 901.
? HAPPY FAT BEAR TUESDAY!?
The polls are now open for our fat bear finale.
747 vs. 901: both of them are fat, but only one of them can be the ultimate Fat Bear Week champion.
Ready, set, vote at https://t.co/Jl79YciHHZ pic.twitter.com/9XljVo8Dmi— explore.org (@exploreorg) October 11, 2022
While judges were counting the votes that came in on Sunday, they noticed that another bear tagged as number 435 and goes by the name Holly, got a suspiciously large amount of votes in just a couple of hours.
Explore.org’s Candice Rusch told CNN Travel via email that, “While not unheard of, it is very uncommon for a bear to come back late in the day like that. We ended up finding just over 9,000 spam votes.”
Candice also added that there were a few spam votes for 747 but it appears they were thrown in attempts to “maybe throw us off?”
“A Fat Bear Week scandal for the ages. Someone stuffed the ballot box!” Explore.org said on Twitter Sunday evening.
? A Fat Bear Week scandal for the ages ?
Someone stuffed the ballot box! The correct total after our review is:
747: 37,940
435: 30,430
That makes 747 today’s winner.
Fake votes are discarded, and all the past days’ votes have been reviewed.
We’ll see you tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/HQcyZOWfeG— explore.org (@exploreorg) October 10, 2022
Fat Bear Week officials said that they added a feature to the voting system where a computer program can distinguish human from machine input and it caught the cheating.
“We don’t want to share too much about the process we used to sort out the spam votes, as we don’t want to teach the spammers how to spam better,” Candice said. However, the fake votes were discarded.
Rising star 901 with another landslide vote day. Is there anything this girl can’t do? We’ll see you tomorrow for the Fat Bear Tuesday finale ? pic.twitter.com/2keJKrLfgM
— explore.org (@exploreorg) October 11, 2022
Fat Bear Week takes place in Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve where many bears congregate on the salmon-packed Brooks River before hibernating for the winter.
On Wednesday, October 12, Katmai National Park & Preserve finally announced they have an official winner for Fat Bear Week…Can you guess who it is?
The bear that got the most votes out of all the other bears competing in the competition was none other than 747!
“747 was deemed an order of magnitude more massive than 901, who experienced troubling tummy turbulence enroute. 901 made a strong start in her 1st #FatBearWeek appearance. Expect big things in the future!”Katmai National Park & Preserve wrote on Twitter.
The votes are in- you’ve decided to upgrade to fish class & fly w/ 747!
747 was deemed an order of magnitude more massive than 901, who experienced troubling tummy turbulence enroute. 901 made a strong start in her 1st #FatBearWeek appearance. Expect big things in the future! pic.twitter.com/i6IPy2ajEw
— Katmai National Park (@KatmaiNPS) October 12, 2022