General: Yellow-bellied Marmots (Marmota flaviventris) are large, heavy-bodied ground squirrels of meadow edges and talus slopes with big boulders in the mountains. Yellow-bellied Marmots grow to about 25-inches long (head and body to about 20 inches, tail about 6 inches). The dorsal color is gray-brown overall with rust and yellow mixed in, and the belly color is yellowish with some rust mixed in. There usually is a patch of white across the nose between the eyes. The feet are reddish to brown, but never black.

Also called woodchuck, but technically that common name belongs to another species: Marmota monax.

Distribution: Don't look for Yellow-bellied Marmots around Las Vegas. Rather, look for them in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, throughout mountains of northern Nevada, in southern Utah (Zion National Park), and places northward into British Columbia.

Habitat: Mountain habitats with meadows and big boulders. Marmots eat and store large amounts of grass, so they need meadows, and they burrow under huge boulders where predators can't dig them out.

Similar Species: None in our part of the world.