Well, I finally succumbed to my baser impulses this week and created an OnlyFans account. I just couldn’t resist anymore. While the platform has existed for many years, a new OnlyFans account recently appeared, offering “unfiltered content” that I had to see for myself.
So I bravely typed in my work email address, verified my email, and then verified my age — all because I couldn’t resist the temptation to see hidden videos of the fat, furry objects of my desire.
I’m speaking, of course, about marmots.
Exclusive videos of these adorable mountain critters are now regularly posted on this platform, best known for its spicy adult content. And why, exactly? Because researchers are desperate for financial support in the wake of White House cuts to scientific research.
Last month, the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) announced the launch of its “OnlyMarms” account. RMBL is essentially a research project created by researchers at UCLA. The project’s scientists have been studying yellow-bellied marmots at a field station near Crested Butte, Colo., since 1962. But “the state of funding is so bad,” they wrote in a June post on Instagram, that they decided to take drastic measures: an OnlyFans account with “uncensored marmot content!”
The results have been more fruitful than these researchers ever imagined.
A Unique Take on OnlyFans
Researchers have been studying yellow-bellied marmots for a really long time.
The Marmot Project — based at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colo. — has been studying the furry rodents since 1962. That makes it the second-longest-running study of wild land animals in history, after Jane Goodall’s groundbreaking research about chimpanzees. Researching marmots isn’t just about understanding the rodents’ behavior; it also gives scientists a long-term picture of changing weather patterns and its impacts on animals.
But times have gotten tough as the Trump administration has made deep funding cuts to scientific research and higher education. The Marmot Project is based out of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which lost a third of its funding for graduate students over the last year.
Those graduate students are the researchers who spend 5 months a year at the Colorado field station — the ones who keep the project going. To try to bridge the funding gap, UCLA Professor Dan Blumstein, who heads the Marmot Project, decided to get creative.
“Dan got the idea for OnlyFans after watching Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” Katie Adler, a PhD student and Marmot Project researcher, told GearJunkie. “And he was like, ‘Well, marmots have money troubles’.”
So Blumstein — with the help of his grad students — created an OnlyFans account to post exclusive videos of marmots taken in the field in Colorado. More importantly, it would offer a fun way for people to donate directly to the Marmot Project. It’s called OnlyMarms, and it didn’t take long for the internet to fall in love.
The Charm of OnlyMarms
The marmot videos posted to OnlyFans are undeniably cute. The most recent one, posted Monday, Aug. 3, shows a pair of marmots cavorting among small rocks, illustrating the animals’ “signature bounciness.” Another video captures a marmot distress call, which sounds like the incessant chirping of a smoke detector on low battery.
So far, the OnlyFans account hasn’t actually generated too many donations. It’s already in the top 5% of the platform’s creators, yet has generated only $5,000 in gross income (and that’s before taxes and the cut taken by OnlyFans).
But thanks to the internet, the irony of sexy marmots has become popular enough to generate a “meme coin,” a type of cryptocurrency. The internet community created the $ONLYMARMS coin, which has already raised more than $14,000 in donations for the Marmot Project’s research. A GitHub page collects many of the OnlyMarms memes that have helped generate interest in buying and selling the crypto coin.
“I thought it was a scam at first,” Adler said. “We’ve made more money from that in four days than we’ve made from the OnlyFans. It will last as long as we’re relevant in the news cycle.”
The sudden spotlight on the Marmot Project has had other benefits, too. Despite the project’s long tenure, it was never able to receive donations directly — until now. UCLA recently created a donation portal that allows anyone to give money to support the project.
“It’s wonderful to see how much people care about the marmots,” said Emily Renkey, a UCLA master’s student and project researcher. “It makes us feel like what we’re doing is valid outside of the scientific community.”
Scientists as Publicists
Despite all the attention, marmot researchers like Renkey and Adler remain cautiously optimistic about the project’s future. They spend long workweeks in the field doing research. The work of online promotion happens after that work is done, and they’re still uncertain if private donations will allow them to continue funding graduate students to keep the project alive.
“We’re researchers. We’re not employed creators,” Adler said. “I’m going through hundreds of camera videos with my team for this. Occasionally, I’ll have capacity, but we’re already working 60 hours a week in the field.”
Despite its long history, the Marmot Project could easily lose its decades of progress. The current situation is “really scary,” Renkey said, because the project relies on the transfer of knowledge between graduate students each year. After three seasons at the Colorado field station, this is Adler’s final year. If there’s not enough funding for Renkey to get into UCLA’s PhD program, there won’t be anyone next year with previous experience collecting data.
“Where are the marmot boroughs? How do you handle the marmots? There’s a lot of information you need to remember. Writing it all down isn’t sufficient,” Renkey said.
To keep the project going, the Marmot Project team continues to get creative with its online presence. They’re also launching a Fat Marmot Week this month: a social media-driven voting contest similar to the ever-popular Fat Bear Week. Without a significant amount of donations, however, Renkey isn’t certain it will be enough.
“I’m not quite as hopeful that things will get better in the next few years,” Renkey said. “I appreciate people giving money, but I wish we could give science to the public without asking them for money.”
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