First ever Fat Marmot Week to kick off in effort to raise money for research

A New Wildlife Contest with a Serious Mission

Colorado's Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory is launching the first Fat Marmot Week, a bracket-style online contest inspired by the popular Fat Bear Week, to raise money for its long-running marmot research. The event, which kicks off Monday, is designed to draw attention to the yellow-bellied marmots of the Rockies while generating donations for a study that has been running since 1962.

The contest comes at a critical time: last winter, researchers say, two-thirds of one marmot population died while hibernating due to insufficient snow cover. The scientists behind the project are also grappling with federal funding cuts that have threatened their work.

"In some sense, we're going to be laughing our way down as the Titanic sinks," said Dan Blumstein, the project's leader, adding a note of gallows humor to the situation. "Because what else are you going to do?"

The event is modeled after Fat Bear Week, an online contest for Alaskan brown bears plumping up for winter. Like its ursine counterpart, Fat Marmot Week is mostly for fun, but it also has a serious side: raising money for the study, which is run by researchers from UCLA and the University of Ottawa at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, about 20 miles south of Aspen.

The Contenders

The competition starts with eight marmots, each with a distinct personality and backstory, as profiled by the Denver Post. Contenders include Stonehenge, who reportedly yelled at bikers 3,000 times in one hour and lost her litter to a badger; Dawn, a father to many litters who checks on his ladies; Dan's Hat, a "cool aunt" whose nieces and nephews were eaten by a badger; and Open Kite, a "girl boss" with no male mate who declined to weigh in.

Others include Citroen, a newcomer and stepdad to last year's pups; Marmot 1, a proud mama sharing her burrow with another mother, 2; Dandelion, a shy queen and young mother of six pups; and G (Goblin), who is "loud and proud" and runs from burrow to burrow.

The competition website playfully notes that Stonehenge, "never phased, she's been focusing on self-care since then and is gaining mass nicely!" while G "runs from burrow to burrow at his colony, but that doesn't seem to stop him from packing on the pounds."

How to Vote and Fundraising Efforts

Voting takes place at sites.google.com/view/fatmarmotweek, with no registration required. The contest runs in rounds: the first round Monday, additional rounds Wednesday and Friday, with the winner crowned Saturday. Researchers will also reveal which marmot gained the most mass during its summer grazing on grasses and wildflowers.

The fundraising effort has already taken creative turns. In July, researchers announced an OnlyMarms page on OnlyFans, a tongue-in-cheek move to raise money amid federal grant cuts. The page, which accepts tips in exchange for G-rated footage of the rodents, has raised $6,700 so far, according to Katie Adler, a PhD candidate at UCLA. Additionally, a "super fan" created a meme coin called $OnlyMarms, donating transaction fees to the research program and raising around $100,000.

Denver Beer Co. has also joined in with a limited release OnlyMarms Extra Thicc Double IPA, donating $1 per pint and crowler sold to the Marmot Project.

"I think people love to have something to root for, and with the current state of long-term funding, people have really rallied behind us," Adler said. "People also just love cute, fat animals, and marmots really take the cake with that!"

The team needs to bank over $200,000 to secure three years of funding, ensuring the research can continue. Adler noted, "People have to find funding in ways that we've never really thought of before."

The Science Behind the Fun

Marmots are cat-sized, furry ground squirrels found in North America, Europe, and Asia, with 15 or so species worldwide, including groundhogs. In the Rockies, yellow-bellied marmots are plentiful, and hikers often spot them perched on boulders or scurrying through wildflowers. They are known for their distinct personalities and "flexibly social" behavior, according to Emily Renkey, a UCLA master's student.

"We kind of understand these marmots just by looking at them sometimes, because we can kind of tell who's who just by how they behave and how they interact with one another," Adler said.

Studying them isn't always easy. Some marmots are wary of researchers' trapping efforts using wire boxes baited with oats and peanut butter, while others are easier to catch, Renkey said. Once captured, the animals offer insights into hibernation, a process that involves their body temperature dropping to as low as 41°F (5°C) and breathing just once a minute or two. Marmots double their weight, to as much as 13 pounds (6 kilograms), to survive the winter.

"Marmots come out of the ground really skinny, relative to what they look like now," Adler said.

Last winter, scant snowfall and warm temperatures due to global warming caused many marmots to die of cold. Blumstein reported, "We had over 160 animals and we ended with 60 at the start of this season." This year, the Upper Colorado River Basin, spanning Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, saw its worst snowpack on record, with human-caused climate change making the snow drought about 14 times more likely.

The changes are cascading: researchers have observed fewer bees and other pollinators, and sagebrush encroaching in valleys. "The snowmelt here impacts the Colorado River which impacts our drinking water," Renkey said.

The marmot study, launched in 1962, is one of the world's longest-running studies of individual mammals. Its researchers, who call themselves "marmoteers," have built a wealth of knowledge over six decades.

"It allows graduate students and other people to come in and suddenly capitalize on this knowledge and ask questions," Blumstein said. The funding cuts, however, have taken a toll: Blumstein's UCLA department lost one-third of its graduate students.

Despite the challenges, the team is hopeful that Fat Marmot Week will bring both smiles and support. As Adler put it, "I think people love to have something to root for."