Our soon-to-be famous marmots

Film crew recording marmot behavior

This week, I got to show these two and their big fancy cameras around our valley. They are filming a nature documentary about the mountains in the Western U.S. and asked us to help them find unmarked marmots to record. I'm proud to say that almost all of the marmots in our population are currently marked, so we had to travel a ways up valley to find some pristine individuals, but we did it. 

I sat with them for a day and they got some pretty cool footage- marmots crossing snow plugs, alarm calling, foraging (of course), even an aggressive chase or two... Looks like it should be a nice story and I'm excited to see the final product!

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New video about the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab!

Check out the recent video highlighting marmot research by undergraduates at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. The marmots will emerge from hibernation before we know it!

Happy Groundhog Day!

This groundhog day, marmots take center stage. Please join us in celebrating this occasion by checking out this story in the Washington Post and a special featurette below about the marmots at RMBL. This featurette was produced as part of the 15th Anniversary Edition release of the film Groundhog Day.

Meet the researchers, see the field site and learn some interesting facts about marmots along they way.

What is all that noise about?

Like humans, many animals also use vocal signals to communicate to each other. Marmots are no exception. In fact, when marmots encounter a predator, they often make a sharp chirping sound called an "alarm-call" which sounds like this:



However, if marmots were to use human words to communicate about dangers nearby, then the message being communicated might actually sound more like this to you: