{"id":1036179,"date":"2026-09-01T03:14:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T03:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1036179\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T03:14:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T03:14:23","slug":"the-1st-fat-marmot-week-winner-is-a-special-boy-who-likes-to-eat-rocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1036179\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1st Fat Marmot Week winner is a ‘special boy who likes to eat rocks’"},"content":{"rendered":"

LISTEN | Interview with Fat Marmot Week organizer Katie Adler:<\/strong><\/p>\n

As It Happens5:52The 1st Fat Marmot Week winner is a ‘special boy who likes to eat rocks’<\/p>\n

A fuzzy fat father who likes the taste of rocks is officially the most popular yellow-bellied marmot in Gothic, Colo.<\/p>\n

When the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory held its inaugural Fat Marmot Week this summer, the contest was twofold \u2014 a popular vote, and a weigh-in to see which contestant packed on the most pounds ahead of hibernation season.<\/p>\n

Dawn won both.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to his online bio<\/a>, he is known for fathering several litters of baby marmots, and licking the salt and minerals off of rocks. He nearly doubled his body weight this summer from 3.8 to 5.9 kilograms, or roughly 5.5 to 13 pounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He definitely deserved it,” Fat Marmot Week organizer Katie Adler told As It Happens host Nil K\u04e7ksal. “He is a special boy who likes to eat rocks.”<\/p>\n

But heavy is the head that wears the crown. As champion chonker, Dawn has also taken on the unofficial role of ambassador for the Marmot Project, a long-term research program whose future hangs in the balance amid widespread science and education funding cuts in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Funding cuts could kill 60-year research project\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fat Marmot Week is inspired by Fat Bear Week<\/a>, a popular contest run by Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.<\/p>\n

Like bears, marmots are hibernators, and soon, Gothic’s population of yellow-bellied marmots will tuck themselves away for an eight-week winter rest.<\/p>\n

“They have to put on all that weight so that they don’t freeze over the winter,” Adler said. “So they get absolutely huge.”<\/p>\n

\"AUCLA graduate student Katie Adler, organizer of Fat Marmot Week, poses with this year’s Fat Marmot Week winner. (Isabel Norman)<\/p>\n

Adler, a graduate student in ecology at the University of California, Los Angeles, works for the Marmot Project, a long-term generational study of yellow-bellied marmots out of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Launched in 1962, it is the world’s second longest-running study of individually marked mammals, after Jane Goodall’s famous chimpanzee research in Tanzania.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the last six decades, its researchers have studied 5,000 marmots over 12 generations, says University of Ottawa biologist Julien Martin, one of the Marmot Project’s leaders.<\/p>\n

“From a human perspective, it would be kind of going back, in terms of generations, to the beginning of the 1700s,” Martin said.<\/p>\n

“In parallel, we are also tracking the environment. So what we’re doing is we’re trying to understand how, essentially, the wild animal of nature is adapting and evolving with the changes in the climate and all the perturbations that humans are bringing.”<\/p>\n

But the Marmot Project is on shaky ground.<\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has issued major cuts to research organizations<\/a>, including a 20 per cent cut to the National Science Foundation (NSF), a major source of research grants in the U.S.<\/p>\n

As a result, the NSF is expected to issue 30 per cent fewer new research grants this fiscal year, according to the journalistic arm of the journal Nature.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

“The pot of money is shrinking, and there’s more people applying to it,” Martin said.<\/p>\n

What’s more, he says, cuts to higher education<\/a> have made it difficult for research labs like the Rocky Mountain to remain properly staffed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s a U.S.-wide problem of, essentially, the erosion of the structure needed for higher education,” Martin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Turning to OnlyFans<\/p>\n

That’s why the Marmot Project has been spearheading outside-the-box public campaigns to raise awareness about their research and solicit donations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the Marmot Project launched OnlyMarms<\/a>, an uncharacteristically family-friendly account on the usually sexually explicit platform OnlyFans, where subscribers can watch the critters on camera traps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We really rely on those long-term funding grants to propel this research forward,” Adler said. “We have to think of other options, or this project might not be able to continue.”<\/p>\n

WATCH | OnlyMarms, the OnlyFans page for marmots:<\/strong>\"\"<\/p>\n

This G-rated OnlyFans page is all about marmots<\/p>\n

Marmots have their very own OnlyFans page. \u2018OnlyMarms\u2019 is a G-rated project on the subscription based website known for sexually explicit content. It was created by a researcher, to help fund a long-term study on yellow-bellied marmots after he says the Trump administration defunded environmental research in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Thanks to these efforts, the lab has managed to raise more than $120,000 US in donations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s definitely going to help, and we’re going to try to stretch the money for as long as we can,” Martin said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, he says, it’s not a sustainable way to fund long-term research.<\/p>\n

So the Marmot Project has launched a petition on Movements.mov calling on Congress in the U.S. to claw back its cuts to research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Called “Don’t Let American Science Depend on OnlyFans,” it had 180 signatures as of Monday afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CBC has reached out to Democratic and Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, but did not receive any responses before deadline.<\/p>\n

\"AnEight contestants competed in Fat Marmot Week. (Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory)<\/p>\n

The Marmot Project, meanwhile, will continue doing what it can, including planning its next Fat Marmot Week for 2027.<\/p>\n

Adler hopes campaigns like this help the public appreciate marmots as much as she does.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During her time in Colorado, she says she’s watched them survive the heat and predators of summer while packing on enough pounds to make it through long, harsh winters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Marmots are resilient,” she said. “I think I’ve gained a lot more respect for them, and I hope the public has, too.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LISTEN | Interview with Fat Marmot Week organizer Katie Adler: As It Happens5:52The 1st Fat Marmot Week winner…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1036180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1036179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}