Fat Marmot Week
Researchers launch Fat Marmot Week to raise money for marmot research, affected by federal funding cuts
Researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, are launching the first ever Fat Marmot Week, an online contest to vote for marmots that have fattened up for winter. The event, which starts on Monday, aims to raise money for scientists to continue their long-running research on the rodents, despite federal funding cuts.
According to Katie Adler, a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles, the marmots are charismatic creatures that exhibit their own personalities and are flexibly social. Some marmots are difficult to study, as they are wary of researchers' efforts to trap them, while others can be trapped multiple times in the same morning.
Marmot Research
The study, run by UCLA researchers, has been ongoing since 1962, making it one of the world's longest-running studies of individual mammals. The researchers have been observing changes in the environment, including fewer bees and other pollinators, and sagebrush encroaching in valleys once dominated by wildflowers. The marmot researchers, who affectionately call themselves marmoteers, have been affected by funding cuts, which have caused the UCLA department to lose one-third of its graduate students.
Fat Marmot Week
Fat Marmot Week is an online contest, similar to Fat Bear Week, where people can vote for their favorite marmot. The event is mostly for fun, but it also has a serious side, as it aims to raise money for the researchers to continue their work. The contest will feature marmots, including one nicknamed Stonehenge, who chirps at mountain bikers, and another, dubbed Citroen, whose mate is a leader of the matriarchal marmot motherland.
Impact of Climate Change
Last winter, scant snowfall and warm temperatures due to global warming deprived many Colorado marmots of an insulating blanket of snow over their burrows, causing many to die of cold. The researchers believe that the lack of snow cover made the hibernation quarters too chilly, resulting in the death of over 100 marmots. This year's snowpack was the worst on record in the Upper Colorado River Basin, which includes Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. The human-caused climate crisis made the snow drought about 14 times more likely, according to a new study.
The researchers have also been posting marmot videos to the OnlyFans adult content platform, and one super fan created a meme coin. Voting for Fat Marmot Week opens on Monday, and the researchers hope that the event will attract interest and donations to keep their work going. As Daniel Blumstein, a researcher at UCLA, said, the study allows graduate students and other people to come in and suddenly capitalize on this knowledge and ask questions, without doing all the grunt work.
