In some laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, someone looked at the research budget and thought: this isn’t enough. Science in the United States has been receiving less and less funding, and a group of biologists who have spent years studying yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains needed a creative way out. They found it in the most unexpected place.
It’s called OnlyMarms, a play on words with OnlyFans that already gets laughs before explaining what it’s about. The account shows marmots doing what marmots do best: eating, sleeping, and posing without knowing they have become part of a scientific funding strategy.
Professor Daniel Blumstein, an expert in ecology and evolutionary biology, said that the idea was not his alone. A graduate student heard the proposal and did not hesitate for a second: they had to do it. Thus was born one of the most ingenious —and fun— ways to keep a long-term research project alive.
