Colorado’s first Fat Marmot Week crowned a heavyweight champion over the weekend.
Dawn, a marmot described as “a very special boy who enjoys the taste of rocks,” received roughly 61% of the vote in the final round of competition, the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory announced Sunday. He beat out G, another male marmot, for the title of chubby champ.
Coincidentally, Dawn was also the rodent that gained the most mass, meaning he swept both titles — people’s choice and girthiest — in the inaugural event. Dawn weighed in at 13 pounds over the weekend, up from 8.5 pounds at the beginning of the summer, researchers said in an announcement. The increase of 4.5 pounds was more than half his body weight.
“Dawn’s weight gain is impressive, and critical for his survival over the winter. When marmots spend eight months underground, they really rely on those fat reserves to sustain them until flowers start blooming again in May or June,” said Katie Adler, a Ph.D candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles and one of the researchers for the laboratory’s decades-old Marmot Project.
Fat Marmot Week began as an effort to raise awareness about yellow-bellied marmots, the largest of Colorado’s ground squirrels, but it quickly turned into a nationwide phenomenon. The furry rodents stole the hearts of internet users everywhere, who voted in the competition and donated to an OnlyFans page, called OnlyMarms, to support the laboratory’s scientific research. More than 23,000 votes were cast during the week-long competition.
The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory has been studying yellow-bellied marmots since 1962 and last winter showed how critical packing on the pounds can be. Record low snowpack led to the loss of 100 marmots in the area near Crested Butte where researchers with the Marmot Project do their fieldwork.
“We had 160 animals last summer, and then this year about 60 emerged, which is a huge die-off. Itap super sad,” Emily Renkey, a UCLA graduate student and researcher with the Marmot Project, previously told The Denver Post. “There was no snow on the ground, which insulates the marmots over the winter from temperature fluctuations in the air. So they were using more of their body fat to try and stay warm.”
Marmots are whatap known as “true hibernators,” meaning they enter a deep slumber when they hibernate and their body temperatures drop to just above freezing to conserve energy. Unlike bears, which periodically awaken to eat and give birth during the winter, marmots remain dormant until the spring.
“Itap 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,” Dan Blumstein, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and co-director of the RMBL Marmot Project, said in a statement.
Blumstein confirmed by email that Fat Marmot Week will return in 2027. Until then, keep up with the marmots on Instagram at . And mark your calendars for , a similar competition featuring bruins at Alaska’s Katmai National Park, which returns Sept. 22-29.
