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Hoary Marmot

A brown marmot with tufts of white fur on its chest sits in an alpine meadow surrounded by purple flowers and green grasses.

Photo by Steven Pavlov; Source: WikiMedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marmota_caligata_(Hoary_Marmot).jpg); Date: September 10, 2011.

The Hoary Marmot (Marmota caligata), a large squirrel-like rodent, communicates with one another by whistling. In the 1960s, a group of Vancouver businessmen led by Franz Wilhelmsen were hoping to bring the Winter Olympic Games to Canada and in particular, British Columbia. During their search for a place to develop a ski recreation area, they found London Mountain and they decided to change the name to Whistler Mountain after the Hoary Marmots.