| Marmot Temporal range: Late Miocene–Recent |
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| Yellow-bellied Marmot in Yosemite National Park | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Rodentia |
| Family: | Sciuridae |
| Subfamily: | Xerinae |
| Tribe: | Marmotini |
| Genus: | Marmota Blumenbach, 1779 |
| Species | |
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Marmota baibacina |
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The marmots are a genus, Marmota, of squirrels. There are 14 species in this genus.
Marmots are generally large ground squirrels. Those most often referred to as marmots tend to live in mountainous areas such as the Alps, northern Apennines, Eurasian steppes, Carpathians, Tatras, and Pyrenees in Europe and northwestern Asia; the Rocky Mountains, Black Hills, Cascades, and Sierra Nevada in North America; and the Deosai Plateau in Pakistan and Ladakh in India. The groundhog, however, is also properly called a marmot, while the similarly sized but 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.
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The following is a list of all Marmota species recognized by Thorington and Hoffman (2005).[1] They divide marmots into two subgenera.
Additionally, four extinct species of marmot are recognized from the fossil record:
Marmots have been known since antiquity. Research by the French ethnologist Michel Peissel makes a claim that the story of "gold-digging ants" reported by the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the 5th century BC, was founded on the golden Himalayan Marmot of the Deosai plateau and the habit of local tribes such as the Minaro to collect the gold dust excavated from their burrows.[2]
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 post-classical Latin, mus montanus, meaning "mountain mouse".[3]
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.[4]
Marmots have been eaten for centuries in the native cuisine of Mongolia, where they are called tarvaga, and in particular are used to make a dish called boodog.[5] Hunting of marmots for food is typically done in seasons and time periods when the animals are heavier.
Pneumonic plague can be spread by marmots.[6][7]