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Claim: Photographs show a pair of albino moose alongside a highway.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, January 2007] Origins: Tracking down the origins of these
We've listed this item as "Partly true" because although the photographs may be genuine, the animals pictured are likely not true albinos but rather
In general, moose have brown coats of hair. In some rare cases, the colour of moose coats can range from predominantly white to a mixture of white and brown. White-coloured moose are not a separate species, but are examples of a rare colour phase that can occur naturally in wild moose populations.
In 2002 the state of Idaho took similar steps to protect a particular white moose during hunting season:
White-coloured moose have been reported in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Newfoundland, Alaska and Idaho. Restrictions on the hunting of white-coloured moose were put in place for the Port au Port Peninsula in 2002 by Newfoundland and Labrador. No other province has hunting regulations prohibiting the harvest of white-coloured moose.
A group of eastern Idahoans smitten by a white moose have persuaded the state to make the animal off-limits to hunters.
Last updated: 11 February 2007
Steve Huffaker, director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, made an emergency order making it illegal to shoot the albino cow moose, which has been spotted with a black calf on private land in southeastern Idaho. The moose hunting season opened [a few days ago]. The move came after the Fish and Game Commission received calls and petitions from residents near Soda Spring pleading for the animal's protection. Albino moose have been showing up in the area for several years, said Dale Toweill, trophy species manager for the fish and game department. Normally, only 1 in 100,000 moose have the albino trait, which is recessive. But the gene appears to run in the herd in southeastern Idaho, where Toweill theorizes the probability of an albino moose may be 1 in 10,000. Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2008 by snopes.com. This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  Sources:
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