Desperate times call for desperate measures.
With traditional funding sources facing cuts, The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, which has spent the last 65 years studying yellow-bellied marmots, had to get creative.
That soon led the Colorado researchers to the internet, where marmot videos have amassed millions of likes, with one especially hilarious Tik Tok video eclipsing three million by itself. In that video, a marmot gets a bath as its handler draws washboard abs on its belly using what seems to be shaving cream.
@crazydealcrew #marmot #fyp ♬ nhạc nền - Marmot TikTok
It was time to harness the popularity and the allure of the cute animals and turn it into a benefit for the largest members of the squirrel family.
“Marmots have money troubles, and I figured why not launch an OnlyFans site?” UCLA professor Daniel Blumstein, co-director of The Marmot Project at the Colorado Laboratory, told TODAY, making a playful reference to the TV series Margo’s Got Money Troubles.
“One of my students is like, ‘Great idea!’ Someone else screamed out, ‘OnlyMarms!’… I’m like, ‘Oh yeah!’”
OnlyMarms went live on OnlyFans.com soon afterward, with the animal burrowing its way onto the paid subscription platform known more for risqué business than rodents. G-rated OnlyMarms is totally free, and accepts tips from users about other creative ways to fund research related to the rodent.
One of the first videos featured a female marmot who rebuffed the advances of a seemingly-interested male as he approached her burrow. As of now, the most famous content creators on OnlyMarms are the animals lovably named Jamba Juice and Egg. (See some clips in the video below…)
Every one of their videos seems to deliver a little happiness and wholesome humor, on the back of a furry, four-legged rodent creature—and the end result is a fundraising gem.
The OnlyMarms account already has about 1,700 fans and has earned approximately $6,000 in tips.
(You can sign up for a free Fans Only account to follow their antics.)
Fat Marmot Week: Another creative solution
The lab is in the midst of their first-ever Fat Marmot Week—a competition allowing the public to vote on marmots that are getting fatter by gaining the most hibernation weight. Round 1 voting ends August 24th, following a similar model used by the National Park Service for Fat Bear Week. (See the news video below…)
The animal’s supporters have also created a meme coin cryptocurrency called OnlyMarms, which has reportedly earned thousands of dollars in fees for the lab.
A local brewery has also gotten into the spirit by collaborating with the lab on a special edition fundraising beer called Marmot Tears.
The financial realities of modern conservation certainly require some creativity. But hopefully, the beers and meme coins and the OnlyMarms site will help keep the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab providing marmot content far into the future.
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“Understanding the world around us is something where there might not be a direct profit,” Blumstein told UCLA’s Daily Bruin. “But we need to understand the world around us. We need to understand the role of species in their communities.”
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