Scientists Use OnlyFans and Cryptocurrency to Fund Marmot Research After US Funding Cuts

The 60-year project, which continuously studies marmots across the US west, was facing termination following science funding cuts imposed by Donald Trump's administration. In desperation, researchers in June decided to put the marmots on OnlyFans, the adult-content website, to raise funds. Since then, posts on the new account, named OnlyMarms, have shown marmots scurrying across rocky landscapes and entering their burrows, rather than anything sexually explicit.

This effort raised a modest $6,000, but a larger funding boost recently materialized in the form of a new marmot-themed cryptocurrency. A “meme coin” named $OnlyMarms was created by outside supporters of the project, who donated all transaction fees to the study. This coin, whose price fluctuates based on viral trends, has raised more than $88,000 in just two weeks. Combined with outside donations from marmot allies uncomfortable donating through OnlyFans, the research program has gained over $100,000, enabling it to continue for another year.

“It's been a crazy last two weeks, it's been incredible to see and it's a relief that the research can continue for another year,” said Julien Martin, a University of Ottawa researcher who co-leads the project with Daniel Blumstein, a UCLA professor who got the idea after watching a TV show about a single mother who turns to OnlyFans.

The meme coin was created by an unknown online community on the Solana blockchain, and Martin initially thought it was a scam before accepting that it could raise funds for the study. He added it is “ironic” that researchers are having to turn to cryptocurrency, an area that has personally netted Trump about $635m through his own meme coin, to make up for science funding slashed by Trump's administration.

The US president has sought to shrink federal scientific funding via the National Science Foundation and has frozen more than $700m in grants, scrapping research that mentions blacklisted terms such as “climate” or “women”. In April, the administration fired the entire 22-person board that independently oversees the NSF.

This realignment has strangled funding for the marmot study at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), a non-profit field station in the Rocky mountains near Crested Butte, Colorado. The study of yellow-bellied marmots was started by Kenneth Armitage, a University of Kansas academic, in 1962 and has grown to be one of the longest-running animal monitoring projects in the world.

Researchers are now on their 11th generation of marmot to be monitored. Martin said the documentation is important as it has illustrated the warping environment around the creatures as the world heats up due to the burning of fossil fuels. “We've seen them increase in body mass as the summers get longer and the winters get shorter – they are getting fatter,” he said, adding that record lack of snowfall in Colorado caused a big die-off of marmots as they need snow as insulation while hibernating. Martin said continued monitoring is needed to ascertain the impact of the climate crisis on marmots, other wildlife and the broader landscape.