Yellow-Bellied Marmot

Yellow-bellied marmots usually weigh between 5 and 11 pounds (2 and 5 kg) when fully grown. They get fatter in the fall just before hibernating.

The Yellow-bellied Marmot’s life zone is very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. Yellow-bellied marmots can be found below the timberline (2,000 m) unlike their relative the pika Marmots dig burrows beneath the earth unlike their relative the ground squirrle. They choose to dig burrows under rocks because predators are less likely to see their burrow. A marmot’s habitat is mostly grass and rocks with few trees. Predators include wolves, foxes, and coyotes. When a marmot sees a predator it whistles to warn all other marmots in the area (giving it the common name the whistle pig). Then it looks for a nearby rock pile because that usually means there is another marmot or an abandoned burrow. If it can’t find that, then it waddles as fast as it can toward its or a friends burrow. Territory is about 20,000 to 30,000 square metres (about 6 acres) around a number of summer burrows.

Marmots reproduce when about 2 years old. They live in colonies. A colony is a group of about 10 to 20. Each male marmot digs a burrow soon after it wakes up from hibernation. Then starts looking for females and by summer have 1 to 4 females living with him. About a month after that 1–9 offspring per female can be living in the burrow but the litter usually averages 2–5 offspring per female. Marmots have what is called “harem-polygynous” which means the male defends 1–4 females and mates at the same time.

Yellow-bellied Marmots are diurnal like most mammals. Diurnal means that it sleeps at night and is awake by day, just like humans. The marmot is also an omnivore which means that it is both a carnivore (an animal that eats meat) and herbivore (an animal who doesn’t eat meat). Marmots eat grass, leaves, flowers, fruit, grasshopper and bird eggs which is a very wide spread diet for such a small creature.

Marmots are not hunted for sport but are sometimes killed by farmers. Scientists study the Yellow-bellied marmot more than any marmot in the world because they are the easiest marmot to study. They are the easiest marmot to study because they live as far north as Alaska and as south as the southern border of the United States of America.

Yellow-bellied Marmots include “toilet rooms” in their burrows as well as living rooms, bedrooms and eating rooms.