The 11-inch Gopher from SBA

This chunky Botta’s Pocket Gopher (Thomomys bottae) at Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History lived his life at the Santa Barbara Airport, where he was collected October 29, 1963. A robust male, he’s one of the largest specimens preserved in the drawer in the background. Before preparing this taxidermy, scientists measured him as over 11 inches long in total length, including over 3.5 inches of tail!

Within the species, you can see variations in color as well as size. Santa Barbara’s Thomomys bottae are mostly quite brown, with the occasional albino, but in the Great Basin they are largely gray. Curator of Mammalogy Ally Coconis, PhD ,wrote her dissertation on other rodents in that region. Although she has personally fought with a gopher over a flower in her garden, she brings nuance and appreciation to her research on small mammals, investigating their relationships and roles in the ecosystems where they reside.