page_title: Olympic marmot
section_title: Colonies
hierarchical_section_title: Olympic marmot / Behavior / Colonies
caption_attribution_description: Olympic Marmot
context_page_description: The Olympic marmot is a rodent in the squirrel family, Sciuridae; it occurs only in the U.S. state of Washington, on the middle elevations of the Olympic Peninsula. The closest relatives of this species are the hoary marmot and the Vancouver Island marmot. In 2009, it was declared the official endemic mammal of Washington.
  This marmot is about the size of a domestic cat, typically weighing about 8 kg in summer. The species shows the greatest sexual dimorphism found in marmots, with adult males weighing on average 23% more than females. It can be identified by a wide head, small eyes and ears, stubby legs, and a long, bushy tail. Its sharp, rounded claws aid in digging burrows. The coat color changes with the season and with age, but an adult marmot's coat is brown all over with small whiter areas for most of the year.
  The species has a diet consisting mainly of a variety of meadow flora, including dry grasses, which it also uses as bedding in burrows. It is preyed on by various terrestrial mammals and avian raptors, but its main predator today is the coyote. The Olympic marmot is rated a species of the least concern on the IUCN Red List.
context_section_description: Olympic marmots are gregarious burrowing animals, living in colonies typically containing multiple burrows. Activity varies with the weather, time of day, and time of year; owing to rainfall and fog cover during June, July, and August, the marmots spend most of the day inside their burrows, and forage for food mostly in the morning and evening. In between these times, Olympic marmots can sometimes be found lying on rocks where they sun themselves for warmth, grooming each other, playing, chirping, and feeding together. Burrows are multi-purpose structures, used for hibernation, protection from bad weather and predators, and to raise newborn pups.
  A typical colony of marmots consists of a male, two to three females, and their young, sometimes living in groups of more than a dozen animals; young marmots stay with their family for at least two years, so a burrow is often home to a newly born litter and a litter of two-year-olds. Marmots seldom move to other colonies with the exception of sub-adults of two to three years old, which may leave the home colony to start a new family elsewhere; females move only a few hundred meters, though males often move several kilometers away from their birth burrow.
  A colony may have a subordinate or "satellite" male, smaller and younger than the colony male, who may take over as the dominant male if the incumbent dies. The satellite male lives in a separate burrow, 55 to 150 m (200 to 500 ft) away from the rest of the colony. After emergence from hibernation, if the satellite male and the colony male are both still living in the same colony, the dominant colony male may chase the satellite around multiple times per day. The satellite male's feeding area is limited to areas far from the rest of the marmots in the colony, and he must stay away from the other marmots' burrows as long as the colony male is near. While the satellite male does not approach the other marmots in the colony, they sometimes make trips over to the satellite male's burrow, often about two times an hour. After more time has passed since hibernation, males will become less hostile towards each other, and less avoidance and chasing will occur. Male-male competition ends around the same time that the reproductive season does. The diminution of hostile behavior is only temporary, as the satellite male becomes assigned to its subordinate status again the following spring after emergence from hibernation and the ritual begins again.
caption: Olympic marmot sunbathing at Hurricane Ridge
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