Today (4/12/26) is the celebration day over on Explore.org for 409 Beadnose and her family, including her grandcubs. This means that the bears being celebrated today are 409 Beadnose, 717, 909, 910, 609, and 910jr.
There are many posts I could have written for today -- I considered a spotlight post or a family tree post -- but whenever I think about 409 Beadnose's family, I think of just one thing: the unique relationships that 909, 910, 609, and 910jr have had, and all the things we have learned from them.
First, a bit of background information: adult brown bears are, broadly speaking, solitary creatures. They congregate in large numbers at highly concentrated and abundant food sources, they have local hierarchies, and they will sometimes play together, but they don't really have close bonds to each other. A mother bear will care for her cubs, protect them with her life, but once that cub is on their own, their mother has no relationship to them anymore. Newly emancipated siblings will stick together for a season or two, and sometimes subadults will hang out with each other for a while...but as they age, those relationships typically fall by the wayside.
At the same time, we also know that we do not understand brown bears. They are hard to study -- they are predatory megafauna that live in some of the most remote locations on earth, and many populations avoid humans. The bear cams at Brooks River in Katmai National Park give us a beautiful, unique glimpse into a world that, otherwise, would be mostly hidden from us. We know that brown bears are capable of incredible, surprising things, and we know that we keep learning new things about them. In 2022, when sisters 909 and 910 combined their families, we learned that sometimes brown bears act in ways that no one can predict, that defy all expectations, and that fly in the face of everything that we thought we knew about them.
909 and 910 were born in 2016 to 409 Beadnose -- her last known litter. They were emancipated in 2018, and like many newly emancipated siblings they stuck together, traveling, playing and fishing together often. But in 2021, 909 had a cub -- now bear 609 -- and like all mother bears, 909 was incredibly protective of her daughter. No bear, not even her sister 910, was allowed near 909's small, defenseless daughter.
In 2022, 910 had a daughter of her own, and in the beginning of the season, it looked like things were progressing as expected. Then, on August 4, the families cautiously approached each other at the falls. First, the sisters approached each other, then 909 sniffed 910jr and 910jr hop-charged 609. Here is a link to a video recording of the event -- which is now considered by many to be the moment that the unique relationship between these families began to blossom.
They met up multiple times over the next two weeks, playing and fishing together. By August 18, 910 was watching both cubs often enough that cam viewers joked about her "babysitting" for 909. Then, on September 5, a park visitor recorded video of 909 and 910 sharing a fish -- and not just with each other, either, but also with each other's cubs. Mike Fitz, a naturalist with Explore.org and a former Katmai ranger, described this meal-sharing as "an unheard-of and unprecedented behavior of bears".
For the rest of the season, the sisters combined their families. The four bears fished, ate, played, and traveled together. Sometimes 909 caught a fish and shared it with 910jr, and sometimes 910 caught a fish and shared it with 609. For a couple of beautiful months, both mothers appeared to treat both cubs as their own. The four of them were last seen for the season on October 19th, and they were still traveling as one unit at that time. Many in the community wonder if the four of them denned together for the winter, which would be truly extraordinary. Unfortunately, we will never know.
In spring 2023, 909 emancipated 609, who was 2.5 years old -- but 910 adopted her shortly afterward. 609 stayed with her aunt and cousin until spring 2025, when both cubs were successfully emancipated by 910. At the time of emancipation, 609 was 4.5 years old and 910jr was 3.5.
This event is the second known adoption to occur at Brooks River, but it's also more than that: it is the most unique relationship between adult brown bears that we have ever recorded. I can't wait to see what the future has in store for these four surprising and widely beloved bears, and I can't wait to see what other unprecedented and unheard-of events we get to see because of these live cams.
The bear cams at Katmai National Park are online 24/7 from about mid-June through mid-October. You can find them, along with many other live nature cams, on Explore.org. I am not affiliated in any way with Katmai National Park & Preserve, The Katmai Conservancy, or Explore.org -- I'm just a bear cam fan, and i do this for fun in my free time.