Marmot vs. ground squirrel: How to tell the difference

I’ve seen a surprising number of folks — including some who’ve been here for a few years — thinking a ground squirrel is a marmot. And really, it makes good sense: If you had never seen either critter before in your life, wouldn’t a lot of the same descriptors apply to them both?

With that in mind, buckle up for Alaska Mountain Rodents 101. And really, if you only remember the difference in size between the two critters, that’s all you need to keep them straight.

Marmot vs. ground squirrel: Size matters!

Adult marmots are about as big as a house cat. They weigh around 10 pounds (4.5 kg) and measure 30 inches (76 cm) from nose to tail.

A ground squirrel, on the other hand, is about the size of an adult guinea pig. They can measure up to 10 inches (25 cm) long, although they may look a little smaller since their tail isn’t as obvious as a marmot’s, and top out at about 3 pounds (1.4 kg).

They sound different

There’s a reason marmots are sometimes called “whistle pigs”: They have a shrieking, whistling call that’s much louder than you might expect. I think it sounds a lot like a train whistle, but it also sounds rather like some emergency whistles hikers carry. That can be pretty disquieting, and I’ve spent more than a while out in the mountains looking for evidence to confirm that I was hearing a marmot in the rocks below, not a person’s emergency whistle.

Ground squirrels, on the other hand, make a chirping, pipping alarm call that, to the uninitiated, may be easily mistaken for a bird.

They have different lifestyles

Marmots tend to live solitary lives. Although I’ve seen the occasional bold specimen, in my experience they’ll quickly disappear into the rocks if you get too close.

Ground squirrels will also run and hide if you get too close, but they live highly social lives with communal burrows in the tundra — it’s pretty easy to spot the circular mouths of their tunnels. If you pay close attention, you may see a ground squirrel disappear into one tunnel and pop out from another that offers it a safer-feeling vantage point on your activities. They also have different calls for ground predators, like us, and for aerial predators like hawks.

Both animals hibernate during the winter, so you’ll only see them during the summer.

Where can I see marmots and ground squirrels?

Of these two animals, ground squirrels are considerably more common: You’ll find them almost anywhere in the tundra throughout much of Alaska. The “drive-up tundra” of Hatcher Pass and Arctic Valley (see Mount Gordon Lyon and Rendezvous Peak) make particularly good places to see them. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, ground squirrels can also live in meadows or along riverbanks and lakeshores, although this isn’t something that I’ve personally witnessed.

Although you may only see a few ground squirrels on lookout duty, rest assure that whenever you see one or a few, there are more of them hiding nearby.

Marmots live in rocky alpine areas throughout most of the state, digging out their burrows in the soil under and around the rocks. In my experience they call out much less than ground squirrels, which makes them harder to locate since both species have superb camouflage.

In general, if you see a marmot south of the Yukon River, you’re looking at a hoary marmot. If you see a marmot north of the Yukon, it’s probably a different subspecies known as the Alaska marmot.

If you’re still not sure what sort of rodent you’ve spotted in the mountains, this infographic may help:

More info from ADF&G

Last but absolutely not least, you can pick up all sorts of interesting factoids about marmots, grounds squirrels, and all sorts of Alaska-y rodents in their Alaska Department of Fish and Game species profile pages:

• Hoary marmot
• Alaska marmot
• Arctic ground squirrel
• Pika (mentioned in the infographic)
• Porcupine (mentioned in the infographic and no, they don’t really belong in the mountains)
• Beaver (mentioned in the infographic and yes, they do sometimes pop up around mountain lakes)