Solana traders on OnlyFans just saved a 64-year marmot wildlife study after federal funding stopped

Every summer in Gothic, Colorado, a yellow-bellied marmot walks into a wire trap baited with oats and peanut butter. A scientist weighs it, takes samples, checks its ear tags, paints a temporary identification mark on its back, and releases it back into the mountain meadow.

The scientific value of this emerges through accumulation, with thousands of encounters repeated for more than six decades creating the second-longest study of individually identified wild mammals in the world. The record follows family lines, health, behavior, reproduction, and survival across generations, allowing biologists to see patterns that take much longer than a typical three-year research grant to emerge.

That record came close to acquiring a permanent blank this year when the National Science Foundation declined the team's latest request for continued support. The scientists then began looking for money in places Kenneth Armitage, the biologist who started the project in 1962, could hardly have imagined.

UCLA professor Daniel Blumstein proposed a G-rated OnlyFans account called OnlyMarms, and an independent group of crypto traders later created a Solana meme coin whose creator fees have generated more than $150,000 for the research project.