Marmots are largest of the ground squirrel family and are related to the woodchuck or groundhog. The word ‘hoary’ means something white or gray with age. Their furs are silvery grey on the tips. Hoary marmot’s heads are black and white and their shoulders, feet and tail are nearly black. The similar Alaskan marmot, found primarily in the Brooks Range, lacks a white face patch and its feet could be dark or light.
Hoary marmots live wherever there are mountains with rocky talus slopes and lush alpine vegetation. They are commonly found in the Northern Rockies to the Pacific coast of British Columbia and Alaska. In Southeast Alaska some hoary marmots have been found building colonies near the rocky shoreline.
To Live in a Burrow
The burrows of hoary marmots are relatively permanent for each colony. Some are used for over 20 years, passed down through generations. Although each family has a separate burrow, these burrows are near each other, forming a colony. Burrows come and go with rhythms of natural succession just like villages inhabited by humans.
Marmots are, along with bats and jumping mice, the only true hibernators in Southeast Alaska. During winters they den up together in a chamber of their multi-tunnel dugouts beneath the rocks. Up to 10-12 marmots will huddle close to keep warm throughout their winter sleep of up to eight or nine months. They are there for each other through the cold times. If it seems like eight months is a long time to catch some shut eye the marmots would agree. They are known to get up occasionally to raise their body temperature for a bit and to relieve themselves for which they have an entirely separate chamber.
What Marmots Eat
Marmots are 99 percent vegetarian (they will eat an occasional insect) and have huge incisors which continue to grow because they wear them down so much. They bulk up throughout the late summer on sedges, lupine leaves, roots, alpine blueberries, mosses and lichens just to name a few.
They live predominantly on rocky slopes of the alpine, where they essentially farm the highland pastures, clipping, plowing, and fertilizing the alpine meadows. They can weigh around 15-20 pounds and can only reach about 10 mph. They don’t have a great chance of outrunning their predators which include bears, wolves, and even eagles in some areas, so they don’t wander too far from their burrows. Ridgeline wolf scat is often found with silvery marmot hair in it; a whole colony can be extinguished in a summer by wolves. Brown bears can excavate the burrows making their highland pastures uninhabitable.
A Sense of Community
Marmots live in bustling noisy communities and like the word implies, they have excellent communication. The marmot's whistle, essentially a warning call, can be heard a mile away and changes depending on the predator approaching. They sound a whistle from a lookout station to warn their colony and as Southeast Alaska Naturalist, Bob Armstrong said, “When it is an alarm call for a ground predator such as a wolf or bear, they will bare their teeth.” When calling out an alarm in regards to an aerial predator such as an eagle they do not.
Marmots survive by helping each other out, much like humans. Their Alpine habitat is central to their communities and thus their survival. Marmots also have an extensive sense of play. They will often stand on their hind legs and “play-box” with each other for long portions of the day. Their summers are made up of peaceful days, sunning on rocks, feeding, and playing in relative security as long as they remain close to their burrow.
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