When the federal funding dried up, one Colorado biologist did what any resourceful scientist would do: he turned to an adult content platform for help.
Dr. Daniel Blumstein, a UCLA-affiliated biologist who leads the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory's Marmot Project, launched an OnlyFans account in July 2026 he calls "OnlyMarms." The catch: all content is firmly family-friendly. Instead of what the platform is typically known for, subscribers get uncensored footage of yellow-bellied marmots doing what they do best — waddling out of burrows, sunbathing on boulders, and chasing each other across alpine meadows in Colorado.
The account has already generated more than $5,000. After OnlyFans takes its cut, the lab receives about $4,000. It's not enough to save the project single-handedly, but it's sparked something potentially more valuable: public attention.
The Marmot Project, based at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Crested Butte, has run continuously for over 60 years, making it the second-longest-running study of individually identified wild mammals in the world — behind only Jane Goodall's chimpanzee research in Tanzania.
For six decades, researchers have tracked every individual yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) in a mountain meadow, recording their genetics, behavior, and survival outcomes across seasons. Because marmots are neither threatened nor endangered, they offer something invaluable: a stable population for understanding ecological dynamics without the pressure of active conservation crises. Long-term data from the project has contributed to research on how climate change affects hibernation timing, how early-life experience shapes adult fitness, and how animals manage the brutal demands of surviving alpine winters.
"Marmots' got money troubles," Blumstein thought, sitting in the meadow one day, watching an animal pop its head out of the ground. He'd recently watched an episode of the show Margot's Got Money Troubles, and the parallel struck him.
Setting up the OnlyFans account hit one early snag: the platform flagged his driver's license photo because it didn't match the account's profile image — a marmot. A quick email to support resolved the situation.
The lab has also launched "Fat Marmot Week," styled after Alaska's popular "Fat Bear Week," a bracket-style public vote for the chunkiest marmot at the end of summer. As hibernating animals, marmots gorge before winter, and Blumstein describes the competition as "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."
Blumstein is candid that OnlyMarms won't solve the funding crisis on its own. The cost of running a multi-decade field study — travel, equipment, student stipends, data management — far outstrips what even a viral marmot account can generate. But the campaign has done something just as important: it's reminded the public that ecological monitoring data is irreplaceable.
Long-term studies like the Marmot Project take generations to build. Once interrupted, decades of continuous records can't be reconstructed. The datasets they generate underpin climate models, conservation strategies, and our understanding of how wildlife responds to a changing world.
The marmots themselves remain oblivious to their new celebrity. True to scientific form, they're identified by codes rather than names — "dans_hat," "open_kite," "Citroën" — specifically to prevent researchers from developing biases toward individual animals. Fame, apparently, is for the humans keeping their records.
