UCLA researchers fund wildlife study on yellow-bellied marmots through OnlyFans

Scientists behind one of the world's longest-running wildlife studies have turned to one corner of internet culture for funding—and found another waiting for them.

Researchers at UCLA launched an OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms to help support a project that has tracked yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado since 1962 after traditional research funding became harder to secure.

The idea came to professor Daniel Blumstein as research funding dwindled. A graduate student dubbed the account "OnlyMarms," and the team leaned into the joke by promising subscribers "uncensored marmot content." Blumstein said it has also become a way to reach new audiences.

“Maybe this is a different audience than, you know, most of our science communication reaches,” Blumstein told NPR in an interview. “That's great. Turns out, it's even bigger than this.”

The account has generated about $4,000 so far. Blumstein said the project ultimately needs between $75,000 and $100,000 a year to support graduate students and fieldwork, funding that federal grants once provided.

The marmot project has also attracted attention from the crypto community.

Over on Pump.fun, several OnlyMarms-inspired meme coins have appeared, though it's unclear who created them or whether any are connected to the UCLA research team. Blumstein told NPR that the researchers did not create the tokens.

“People have independently created a meme coin and told us to grab the transaction—to register it, and then we get the transaction fees. And that is blowing up,” he said. “Apparently, this is a meme coin for good that people like.”

It wouldn't be the first time an internet-famous animal inspired a cryptocurrency.

In 2024, the Solana token Moo Deng, based on the viral pygmy hippo, launched on Pump.fun and briefly reached a market capitalization of about $680 million before landing listings on major exchanges, including Coinbase.

The researchers have also partnered with a Colorado brewery on a "Marmot Tears" IPA and launched a public "Fat Marmot Week" competition.

Blumstein said the situation reflects the state of scientific funding in the United States, noting that raising money through platforms like OnlyFans is a far cry from how research projects were funded when he was in graduate school.

“No. It's appalling,” he said. “What we're doing is destroying the scientific structure and the university-federal partnerships that made us great, made us rich, made us the scientific leaders of the world. It's being taken apart, and that's really sad.”