Color Sports in Moles and Gophers

Color sports are generally rare in the animal kingdom, but somewhat less rare among burrowing mammals.  We've come across a a couple of melanistic(black) gophers, several all white albino gophers, and a few "blond" moles.  They are very rare, and even doing mole and gopher control full time professionally and trapping many thousands of animals per year, we normally only run across these special individuals once every few years, although as pictured below, on one job we caught an albino and a melanistic gopher on the same day within yards of each other.