Marmot Research Lab Turns to OnlyFans for Cash

Amid some major federal cuts to university funding, one university-affiliated science program has started an OnlyFans page to get its cheddar.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), an arm of the United States federal government, has been in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration for some time now. In April of this year, Trump fired all 24 members of the NSF’s board, including the Director and Deputy Director, two positions which remain vacant as of this writing. What’s more, Trump’s crew has retaliated against higher education in general by freezing millions of dollars in university grants. The Administration has also proposed cutting nearly half of the NSF’s budget, which would take the government agency from $8.8 billion to $3.9 billion. Without funding or oversight, the NSF is essentially useless to anyone looking for grant money. After being denied a grant by the NSF, a marmot research lab took matters into their own hands.

The Blumstein lab, affiliated with UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), has started a page called OnlyMarms, and they’re already raking in the dough. Debuting at the end of May, the few-months-old account offers no monthly fee for potential subscribers, but gladly takes donations. Despite only existing for basically two months, according to researchers, their work has already received over $5,000 in donations (or, as OnlyFans calls it, tips). After OnlyFans’ 20% service fee, the Blumstein lab will still make around $4,000. Oh, and by the way, someone else started a cryptocoin also called OnlyMarms, which is expected to earn the lab hundreds of thousands of dollars in trading fees. 

While the page offers subscribers a glimpse into life as a marmot, the big goal of Blumstein lab is to continue the marmot research of ecologist Ken Armitage. Armitage, who passed away in 2022, has been studying yellow-bellied marmots since 1962. After his retirement in 2003, he handed the project off to the Blumstein lab, and they’re using OnlyFans to continue his research. 

Dan Blumstein, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and the namesake of the Blumstein lab, says he got the idea to use OnlyFans for funding after watching Margo’s Got Money Troubles , a show on Apple TV where the main protagonist uses OnlyFans to get by. Blumstein says that while the move to OnlyFans is fun and attracts some good attention to their work, it’s more of a sad commentary on how scientists are having to get crafty to fund informative research.

“This is a great teachable moment, not just about marmots, but about the sad state of scientific funding, the value of long-term scientific research and keeping a project alive that we think is valuable to society,” Blumstein said. 

First-year grad student and student researcher in the Blumstein lab, Emily Renkey echoes her professor’s assessment of things. “OnlyMarms is meeting the moment of our public frustration over what this country funds,” she said. “It may be symbolic for a lot of people of the lengths researchers have to go in order to fund really important work.” 

As of now, @onlymarms has over 7,000 fans and nearly 2,000 likes on its 30 posts. Professor Blumstein says you might see an occasional marmot brawl, but other than that, the account is intended to be family-friendly and mostly shares cute marmot stuff. 

With all of the funding snafus going on in government, OnlyFans could be becoming science’s surprising solution.