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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Marmot (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Marmoset.

Marmots

Temporal range: Late Miocene –

recent

Yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota

flaviventris)

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia
 Order: Rodentia

Family: Sciuridae

Tribe: Marmotini

Genus: Marmota
Blumenbach, 1779

Type species

Mus marmota

Species

15, see text

Marmots are large ground squirrels in the genus Marmota, with 15 species living in

Asia, Europe, and North America. These herbivores are active during the summer,
when they can often be found in groups, but are not seen during the winter, when
they hibernate underground. They are the heaviest members of the squirrel family.[1]

Description[edit]
Marmots are large rodents with characteristically short but robust legs, enlarged
claws which are well adapted to digging, stout bodies, and large heads and incisors
to quickly process a variety of vegetation. While most species are various forms of
earthen-hued brown, marmots vary in fur coloration based roughly on their
surroundings. Species in more open habitat are more likely to have a paler color,
while those sometimes found in well-forested regions tend to be darker.[2][3] Marmots
are the heaviest members of the squirrel family. Total length varies typically from
about 42 to 72 cm (17 to 28 in) and body mass averages about 2 kg (4+1⁄2 lb) in
spring in the smaller species and 8 kg (18 lb) in autumn, at times exceeding 11 kg
(24 lb), in the larger species.[4][5][6] The largest and smallest species are not clearly
known.[3][4] In North America, on the basis of mean linear dimensions and body
masses through the year, the smallest species appears to be the Alaska marmot and
the largest is the Olympic marmot.[5][7][8][6] Some species, such as the Himalayan
marmot and Tarbagan marmot in Asia, appear to attain roughly similar body masses
to the Olympic marmot, but are not known to reach as high a total length as the
Olympic species.[9][10] In the traditional definition of hibernation, the largest marmots
are considered the largest "true hibernators" (since larger "hibernators" such
as bears do not have the same physiological characteristics as obligate
hibernating animals such as assorted rodents, bats and insectivores).[11][12]
Biology[edit]
Some species live in mountainous areas, such as the Alps,
northern Apennines, Carpathians, Tatras, and Pyrenees in Europe; northwestern
Asia; the Rocky Mountains, Black Hills, the Cascade and Pacific Ranges, and
the Sierra Nevada in North America; and the Deosai
Plateau in Pakistan and Ladakh in India. Other species prefer rough grassland and
can be found widely across North America and the Eurasian Steppe. The slightly
smaller and more social prairie dog is not classified in the genus Marmota, but in the
related genus Cynomys.
Marmots typically live in burrows (often within rockpiles, particularly in the case of
the yellow-bellied marmot), and hibernate there through the winter. Most marmots
are highly social and use loud whistles to communicate with one another, especially
when alarmed.
Marmots mainly eat greens and many types
of grasses, berries, lichens, mosses, roots, and flowers.
Marmot eating flowers

Subgenera and species[edit]

The following is a list of all Marmota species recognized by Thorington and
Hoffman[13] plus the recently defined M. kastschenkoi.[14] They divide marmots into
two subgenera.

 Genus Marmota – marmots
o Subgenus Marmota
 Marmota baibacina - Gray marmot or Altai marmot,
found in Siberia
 Marmota bobak - Bobak marmot, found from eastern
Europe to central Asia
 Marmota broweri - Alaska marmot, Brower's marmot,
or Brooks Range marmot, found in Alaska
 Marmota camtschatica - Black-capped marmot, found
in eastern Siberia
 Marmota caudata - Long-tailed marmot, golden
marmot, or red marmot, found in central Asia
 Marmota himalayana - Himalayan marmot or Tibetan
snow pig, found in the Himalayas
 Marmota kastschenkoi - Forest-steppe marmot, found
in south Russia[14]
 Marmota marmota - Alpine marmot, found only in
Europe in the Alps, Carpathian Mountains, Tatra
Mountains, northern Apennine Mountains, and
reintroduced in the Pyrenees
 Marmota menzbieri - Menzbier's marmot, found in
central Asia
  Marmota monax - Groundhog, woodchuck, or
whistlepig, found in much of Canada and east of the
Mississippi in northern USA
 Marmota sibirica - Tarbagan marmot, Mongolian
marmot, or tarvaga, found in Siberia
o Subgenus Petromarmota
 Marmota caligata - Hoary marmot, found in
northwestern North America (Alaska, Yukon, British
Columbia, Alberta, Washington, Montana)
 Marmota flaviventris - Yellow-bellied marmot, found in
southwestern Canada and western United States
 Marmota olympus - Olympic marmot, endemic to
the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, United States
 Marmota vancouverensis - Vancouver Island marmot,
endemic to Vancouver Island, British Columbia,
Canada
Additionally, four extinct species of marmots are recognized from the fossil record:

 †Marmota arizonae, Arizona, U.S.[15][16]

 †Marmota minor, Nevada, U.S.[17]
 Marmota robusta, China = M. himalayana
 †Marmota vetus, Nebraska, U.S.[18]

History and etymology[edit]

Marmota primigenia fossil

A Marmot with a Branch of Plums, 1605 by Jacopo Ligozzi

Marmots have been known since antiquity. Research by

the French ethnologist Michel Peissel claimed the story of the "Gold-digging ant"
reported by the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century
BCE, was founded on the golden Himalayan marmot of the Deosai Plateau and the
habit of local tribes such as the Brokpa to collect the gold dust excavated from their
burrows.[19] Some historians believe that Strabo's λέων
μύρμηξ and Agatharchides's μυρμηκολέων, most probably are the marmot.[20]
An anatomically accurate image of a marmot was printed and distributed as early as
1605 by Jacopo Ligozzi, who was noted for his images of flora and fauna.
The etymology of the term "marmot" is uncertain. It may have arisen from the Gallo-
Romance prefix marm-, meaning to mumble or murmur (an example
of onomatopoeia). Another possible origin is postclassical Latin, mus montanus,
meaning "mountain mouse".[21]
Beginning in 2010, Alaska celebrates February 2 as "Marmot Day", a holiday
intended to observe the prevalence of marmots in that state and take the place
of Groundhog Day.[22]
Relationship to the Black Death[edit]
A number of historians and paleogeneticists have postulated that the Yersinia
pestis variant that caused the pandemic that struck Eurasia in the 14th
century originated from a variant for which marmots in China were the natural
reservoir species.[23][24]

Examples of species[edit]


Yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park

 

Yellow-bellied marmot, near Princeton, British Columbia

 
 

Olympic marmot (Marmota olympus)

 

Groundhog (Marmota monax), Ottawa, Ontario
 

Hoary marmot (Marmota caligata), Mount Rainier National Park

 

Alpine marmot, Vanoise National Park, French Alps

 
 

Black-capped marmot (Marmota camtschatica)

 

Long-tailed marmot (Marmota caudata), Kashmir

 

Himalayan marmot (Marmota himalayanus), Bhutan

 


 Gray marmot (Marmota baibacina), Altai Mountains, Kazakhstan
 

Tarbagan marmot (Marmota sibirica), Russia and Mongolia

 

Drawing of bobak marmot (Marmota bobak)

References[edit]
1. ^ Kryštufek, B.; B. Vohralík (2013). "Taxonomic revision of the Palaearctic rodents
(Rodentia). Part 2. Sciuridae: Urocitellus, Marmota and Sciurotamias". Lynx, N. S.
(Praha). 44: 27–138.
2. ^ Armitage, KB; Wolff, JO; Sherman, PW (2007).  Evolution of sociality in marmots: it
begins with hibernation. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. pp. 356–367.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b Cardini, A; O'Higgins, Paul (2004).  "Patterns of morphological evolution in
Marmota (Rodentia, Sciuridae): geometric morphometrics of the cranium in the context of
marmot phylogeny, ecology, and conservation". Biological Journal of the Linnean
Society.  82  (3): 385–407.  doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2004.00367.x.
4. ^ Jump up to:a b Armitage, KB; Blumstein, DT (2002). Body-mass diversity in marmots.
Holarctic marmots as a factor of biodiversity. Moscow: ABF. pp. 22–32.
5. ^ Jump up to:a b Edelman, AJ (2003).  "Marmota olympus". Mammalian
Species. 2003 (736): 1–5. doi:10.1644/736. S2CID  198129914.
6. ^ Jump up to:a b Armitage, KB; Downhower, JF; Svendsen, GE (1976). "Seasonal changes
in weights of marmots". American Midland Naturalist. 96 (1): 36–
51.  doi:10.2307/2424566.  JSTOR  2424566.
7. ^ Barash, David P. (1989). Marmots: Social Behavior and Ecology. Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1534-8.
8. ^ Hubbart, JA (2011). "Current Understanding of the Alaska Marmot (Marmota broweri): A
Sensitive Species in a Changing Environment". Journal of Biology and Life
Sciences.  2 (2): 6–13.
9. ^ Murdoch, JD; Munkhzul, T; Buyandelger, S; Reading, RP; Sillero-Zubiri, C (2009). "The
Endangered Siberian marmot Marmota sibirica as a keystone species? Observations and
implications of burrow use by corsac foxes Vulpes corsac in Mongolia". Oryx.  43  (3):
431–434. doi:10.1017/S0030605309001100.
10. ^ Chaudhary, V; Tripathi, RS; Singh, S; Raghuvanshi, MS (2017). "Distribution and
population of Himalayan Marmot Marmota himalayana (Hodgson, 1841)(Mammalia:
 Rodentia: Sciuridae) in Leh-Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, India". Journal of Threatened
Taxa. 9  (11): 10886–10891.  doi:10.11609/jott.3336.9.11.10886-10891.
11. ^ Armitage, KB (1999).  "Evolution of sociality in marmots". Journal of
Mammalogy.  80  (1): 1–10. doi:10.2307/1383202. JSTOR 1383202.
12. ^ Nedergaard, J; Cannon, B (1990). "Mammalian hibernation". Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences.  326  (1237): 669–
686.  Bibcode:1990RSPTB.326..669N.  doi:10.1098/rstb.1990.0038. PMID 1969651.
13. ^ Thorington, R. W., Jr., and R. S. Hoffman. (2005). "Family Sciuridae". Mammal Species
of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, pp. 754–818. D. E. Wilson and D.
M. Reeder, eds. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
14. ^ Jump up to:a b Brandler, OV (2003). "On species status of the forest-steppe
marmot  Marmota kastschenkoi  (Rodentia, Marmotinae)".  Zoologičeskij žurnal (in
Russian). 82 (12): 1498–1505.
15. ^ GBIF Secretariat.  "Marmota arizonae  GBIF Backbone Taxonomy". Retrieved 30
April  2017.
16. ^ "Marmota arizonae Hay".
17. ^ Paleobiology Database. "Marmota minor". Retrieved  30 April 2017.
18. ^ GBIF Secretariat.  "Marmota vetus  GBIF Backbone Taxonomy". Retrieved  30
April  2017.
19. ^ Peissel, Michel. "The Ants' Gold: The Discovery of the Greek El Dorado in the
Himalayas". Collins, 1984. ISBN 978-0-00-272514-9.
20. ^ Strabo, Geography H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., Ed., 16.4.15, note 1
21. ^ "Marmot".  Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.).  Oxford University Press. (Subscription
or participating institution membership required.)
22. ^ The Associated Press. "Alaska to Celebrate its First Marmot Day" Archived 2010-02-05
at the Wayback Machine, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Feb. 1, 2010. Accessed Feb. 1,
2010.
23. ^ Smithsonian Magazine. "Did the Black Death Rampage Across the World a Century
Earlier Than Previously Thought?", March 25, 2021. Accessed March 27, 2010.
24. ^ The American Historical Review. "The Four Black Deaths", December 17, 2020.
Accessed March 27, 2010.