The organizers of the Fat Bear Week contest in Alaska have chosen a winner, although voters tried cheating.
On Sunday, the national park said that someone tried to “spam” the voting. However, it was easy to see which votes were real and which were fake.
Organizers of the Fat Bear Week contest became suspicious of the number of votes. A bear named “435 Holly” suddenly got 6,000 new votes in a couple of hours.
Candice Rusch, the director of new media for the website explore.org, said that it’s uncommon for a bear to suddenly receive so many votes.
In the end, contest organizers found more than 9,000 spam votes. Rusch says that the spam stopped after the bear “435 Holly” was leading the contest.
After recounting the votes, a bear named “747”, like the large passenger jet plane, became the champion of Fat Bear Week. It was the second time that “747” won the contest. The first time was in 2020.
The Fat Bear Week contest started in 2014 and is held by Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. More than 2,000 brown bears live there.
For the Fat Bear Week contest, voters look at before-and-after pictures of bears to decide which bear gained the most weight. The bears eat a lot all summer to prepare for five months of hibernation in winter.
There are hundreds of thousands of voters every year.
VOCABULARY
- Organizer – a person or group that organizes an event or meeting
- Contest – competition; game to find the best or a winner; tournament
- Cheat – to break rules; behave dishonestly; use unfair methods to get something you want
- National Park – A park or land that is protected by a country’s government
- Spam – unwanted emails or messages sent to many people at one time; to send a lot of “fake” messages in a short time
- Suspicious – distrust; to feel or believe that someone did something wrong
- Director – boss, leader, head, manager
- In the end – finally; in conclusion; ultimately; when finished
- Lead – to be at the front; to be ahead; to be winning
- Passenger jet plane – a large jet airplane for people to travel on
- Champion – the winner 🏆
- Hold – to organize; to arrange; to have an event
- Gain weight – to become heavier; to get fat
- Hibernation – when animals sleep or stay inactive for all of winter
- Hundreds of thousands – a number between 200,000 and 1,000,000
Original story from ABC News below:
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