LOOK – Colorado’s first-ever ‘Fat Marmot Week’ has a winner, and he’s a 13-pound rock-eating legend
Aug 31, 2026, 4:21 PM | Updated: Sep 1, 2026, 10:22 am
Move over, Fat Bear Week. Colorado has its own chunky champion now, and his name is Dawn. The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory’s inaugural Fat Marmot Week wrapped up this weekend, and the six-year-old yellow-bellied marmot swept both the popular vote and the actual mass-gain competition. He packed on 4.5 pounds over the summer, ballooning from 8.5 to 13.2 pounds, which researchers say makes him one of the heaviest marmots they’ve ever measured. “Six kilos is really humongous for that species,” Julien Martin, co-leader of the Marmot Project, told The Guardian. Oh, and his official bio describes him as “a very special boy who enjoys the taste of rocks.”
The competition pitted eight yellow-bellied marmots, Dawn, G, Dan’s Hat, Citroen, Open Kite, 1, Dandelion and Stonehenge, against each other as they spent August bulking up near Crested Butte in preparation for winter hibernation. Yellow-bellied marmots, Colorado’s largest ground squirrels, spend more than half the year curled up underground with lowered body temperatures and slowed breathing, surviving entirely on stored fat. So getting chunky isn’t just cute, it’s literally life or death. More than 23,000 votes were cast during the week-long competition, and the whole thing became a nationwide phenomenon that even NPR’s Weekend Edition exclusively announced.
The event was created by the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, which has been studying marmots since 1962 at their field station near Gothic, Colorado, at 9,500 feet. But Fat Marmot Week wasn’t just about internet fun, it was born out of necessity after cuts to research funding threatened the decades-old Marmot Project. To raise money, the researchers launched an OnlyFans page called “OnlyMarms” (yes, really), and between that, outside donations and a marmot-themed cryptocurrency created by online supporters, Fat Marmot Week brought in more than $100,000. Last winter’s record-low snowpack killed 100 marmots in the study area, making the research more critical than ever.
Fat Marmot Week 2027 is already confirmed. Start picking your favorite now.
