The yellow-bellied marmots of the Rocky Mountains in North America are getting fatter and surviving longer because of the effects of climate change, new research has suggested.
Longer summers and shorter winters are causing the large rodents to wake from hibernation earlier than before, giving them more time to feed, scientists have discovered.
This is allowing marmots to put on more weight and to breed earlier, increasing their numbers and their offspring’s chances of surviving the winter. As a result, the marmot population is steadily increasing in size, and is currently enjoying a “baby boom” that began around 2001.
Yellow-bellied marmots live at altitudes of about 3,000m (9,842ft) and have adapted to the long mountain winters by hibernating for seven to eight months of the