The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
by Dawne Belloise
Who would have thought that the marmots of Rocky Mountain Biological Labs (RMBL) in Gothic would garner so many followers on the webpages of Only Fans, the social media platform mostly known for its explicitly sexy adult content? Not just marmots, but the chonkiest chunkies of the furry ground squirrels, studied by the researchers at RMBL.
To be sure, there are a plethora of other content creators on the Only Fans site from fitness coaches, chefs and musicians to mainstream models who make money from their paying fans. With funds to science being cut, particularly affecting RMBL’s longest ongoing research of yellow-bellied marmots in the world, the brilliant concept of creating an Only Marms page developed when Dan Blumstein, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, got the idea from a TV show, Margo’s Got Money Troubles, about a character who needed money and created a successful Only Fans page. Then Emily Renkey, a master’s student in the Blumstein Lab at UCLA and one of the research scientists at RMBL, created the Only Marms page, fashioning it after the Only Fans pages and going live on that platform.
They had plenty of video content from motion activated wildlife cameras set up outside the marmot burrows. “We thought it was silly and fun,” Renkey says, and they wanted to ensure their site was G-rated. “The response has been awesome. I don’t think we realized how many people would be interested. I think a lot of people are understanding that we don’t have funding now, so the plot has not been lost,” Renkey feels. So far, the donations have reached $5,000 since the first video was posted in early June. Some of the videos are informational, showing how they mark the marmots to keep track of them individually, but mostly the videos depict everyday marmot life, love, social interaction and other interesting behaviors. They’ll continue to post the videos, which will remain up through the season.
The Only Marms page is certainly news but to make the public further aware, the researchers have created an event worthy of Crested Butte’s love of wildness and wilderness with the first Fat Marmot Week contest with plans to continue the contest next year as well. Voting for your favorite chunky marmot begins August 24, Renkey tells.
Renkey said, “We’ll see how many people show up to vote but we’ve had a good turnout in terms of engagement on the website, Instagram and other social media platforms.”
There are a total of eight plump marmots to vote on, all adults, both male and female. The voting and contest are free and online at sites.google.com/view/fatmarmotweek. Voting begins August 24 through August 26 and will be by elimination until the final marmot is chosen for their hopefully hefty girth on Wednesday, August 26.
Team leader of the Fat Marmot Week project, Katie Adler, a UCLA Ph.D. candidate, says that their original goal was to raise awareness and get people excited for a science communication project. “When Only Marms came out, we received more response and followers, more people excited about everything. We had a lot more people traffic on our page and a lot more people started donating,” she says and explains that there’s much less funding for science in general these days. “Everyone’s having trouble with funding so we’re looking for other forms of funding we can use. It was more of a joke and for fun.”
The Only Marms page has garnered more than 2,000 followers. “We want people to get excited about marmots and wildlife, and if one person takes something away from this and learns something new,” then she says their goal has been realized. “We hope that people learn new things from what we’re doing.”
Our local yellow-bellied marmots hibernate for seven or eight months during the winter beginning in early October, waking in April and May. The largest of the true hibernators, marmots bulk up all summer to survive the winter. The earlier snow melts will bring marmots out of their slumber earlier than normal. “This year we had a super no-snow year, but they also had more time to forage and get fattened up. There was grass on the ground when they woke up and it was unprecedented for how early everything was growing,” Renkey tells. “Fat Marmot Week is an opportunity to get folks excited about yellow-bellied marmots, one of our favorite alpine residents, and to share the science behind their weight gain,” Adler adds.
Dan Blumstein of the RMBL Marmot Project and a UCLA professor says, “It’s fun to root for the chunkiest marmot, but behind the fun and games is a deathly serious competition against nature to pile on fat to survive the long, cold winter and these days, with less predictable weather and wild fluctuations in snowfall, survival is not guaranteed. Importantly, marmots give us a window on the health of high-alpine ecosystems.”
Cast your vote!
The public can meet this year’s Fat Marmot contestants online. Voting opens August 24 at sites.google.com/view/fatmarmotweek, where participants can vote for the marmot they think best exemplifies healthy hibernation preparation. Final-round voting takes place August 28, and the chunky champion will be crowned August 29.
Follow @rocky_mountain_bio_lab and @rmblmarmotproject on Instagram for updates.
