Fat Bear Week participants fight to the death – who started it?

He couldn't stand the competition.

Fat Bear Week has returned, but the bears' gruesome nature has brought the “celebration of success and survival” to a halt.

The location of the competition was scheduled to be announced Monday, but when a deadly fight between two Alaskan grizzlies was livestreamed, the announcement was pushed back to Tuesday.

A male bear with identification number 469, referred to as “Patches,” killed a female bear with identification number 402 along the Brooks River in Katmai National Park & ​​Preserve in Alaska.

“National parks like Katmai protect not only the wonders of nature, but also harsh realities. “Each bear seen on the webcams is competing with others for survival,” the park said in a statement to CBS.

The abuse was recorded around 9:30 a.m. Monday on a popular webcam that tracks the bears along the river.

“Today a bear killed another bear by the river. It was captured live on the webcams and we thought we couldn't move forward with unveiling our Fat Bear Week series without addressing this situation first,” said Mike Fritz, resident naturalist at Explore.org, on the livestream Monday site of the planned unveiling, according to CBS.

The Brooks River is a protected area on the Alaska Peninsula that attracts some of the region's largest bears hunting for sockeye salmon, according to the National Park Service. The bears are currently preparing for hibernation as they hunt the end of the seasonal salmon run.

Fritz and Sarah Bruce, a park ranger in Katmai, agreed that the fight between the two bears was probably not just a confrontation over food because it was too drawn out and difficult to observe.

“We know at this time of year that bears are in this state of hyperphagia, eating whatever they can,” Bruce said. “I don’t know why a bear would want to expend so much energy killing another bear for food. While it is unusual for a bear to chase another bear, it is not completely impossible. So it’s hard to say how this started.”

According to the North American Bear Center, hyperphagia is a period of excessive eating and drinking to fuel yourself for hibernation.

While Fritz and Bruce said it's not clear what sparked the argument, they ultimately believe Bear 469 saw Bear 402 as potential prey.

“Whatever caused this initially triggered a predatory or sustained predatory response in 469,” Naomi Boak of the nonprofit Katmai Conservancy and Sarah Bruce, a ranger at Katmai National Park, said in the video, according to NPR.

Boak noted that the female bear was almost as big as the male bear that killed her, “so she fought, she fought, and kept fighting.”

Fritz said it appeared that Bear 402 ultimately died as a result of drowning after he became overwhelmed and ended up in the water.

“This is very difficult to observe and understand,” Boak said. She added: “We can feel these things, but we can't anthropomorphize what's going on and assume that a bear's behavior is the same as our behavior. “It's very different, these are wild animals.”

Fat Bear Week, October 4-10, celebrates the “resilience, adaptability and strength” of Katmai brown bears, and the bears compete in a tournament-like competition in a group. Fans can vote online to decide which bear will ultimately be crowned champion.

The competition is in its 10th year and includes 12 bears. Voting for this year's round is open until October 8th.

“We love celebrating the success of bears with full stomachs and plenty of body fat,” Fritz said. “But the ferocity of bears is real, the risks they face are real, their lives can be hard and their deaths painful.”

Bear 402 never won Fat Bear Week, but she was “the mother of at least eight litters, more than any other bear currently in Brooks River,” according to the National Park Service.

As for Bear 469's fate, Bruce said there will be no intervention.

“The park will not harm the bear or 469,” she said. “You know, it’s just part of bear behavior and bear life. It's one of the sadder parts of it, one of the harder parts of it. But we will definitely allow nature to take its course.”