{"id":2401,"date":"2019-09-11T09:49:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T14:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/?p=2401"},"modified":"2019-09-11T09:49:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T14:49:18","slug":"the-loch-ness-monster-is-in-the-news-again-is-there-any-actual-evidence-to-support-the-existence-of-this-legendary-creature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/11\/the-loch-ness-monster-is-in-the-news-again-is-there-any-actual-evidence-to-support-the-existence-of-this-legendary-creature\/","title":{"rendered":"The Loch Ness Monster is in the news again. Is there any actual evidence to support the existence of this legendary creature?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Loch Ness Monster may not get as much publicity as Flying Saucers or Bigfoot do but it’s really the same sort of phenomenon. A few hints of something strange in the historical record, a few sketchy sightings of something that can’t be identified. Once a couple of stories are published in the press it suddenly seems as if everybody is talking about it. Then the number of people who claim to have seen it explodes. Before long the hoaxers join in and you lose all sense of what is legitimate evidence and what has been fabricated in order to make a quick buck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Toss a hubcap in the air and you too can see a flying saucer! (Credit: SETI Institute)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Finally, after years of sightings with no hard physical evidence to back anything up the public splits into two distinct groups, those who are true believers and those who think it’s all a bunch of humbug. This state of affairs can go on for years with accusations of government cover-ups being added in as an excuse for the lack of real proof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Loch Ness Monster the earliest known report of the creature is from a biography of the Irish monk Saint Columba written about the year 565 CE. In that account a ‘water beast’ in Loch Ness has killed a man and threatens one of the saint’s followers. Columba saves his companion by making the sign of the cross and commanding the beast to leave. Believers in the monster point to this story along with other Celtic folklore about water ‘kelpies’ as evidence that the beast has lived in the loch for centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Legend has it that St. Columba chased a ‘water beast’ from Loch Ness. (Credit: Anomalies)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nmonster, commonly known as Nessie first gained worldwide attention in the 1930s\nwith a description of an encounter by George Spicer and his wife who described\nthe creature as being a long snake or eel like creature some 8 meters in length\nand a bit over a meter in height. Although the Spicers saw no limbs on the\ncreature it crawled across the road and disappeared into the loch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was just a year later on the 21st of April 1934 that the most famous picture of the Loch Ness Monster first appeared in the British newspaper the ‘Daily Mail’. The photo came to be known as ‘The Surgeon’s Photograph’ because the Daily Mail had obtained it from a London gynecologist named Robert Kenneth Wilson although significantly Wilson refused to have his name associated with the image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Daily Mail headline showing the Surgeon’s Photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. Notice how there is nothing else in the image to give you an idea of the size of the ‘Monster’. (Credit: PBS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The photo caused an immediate sensation and quickly led to the best-known explanation of the monster as a plesiosaur, an aquatic reptile that went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs. The idea that a small population of these creatures had somehow survived extinction and was now inhabiting Loch Ness, and perhaps other lakes around the world gained considerable popularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Plesiosaurs are aquatic reptiles that are considered to have become extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs. (Credit: Dinosaur Jungle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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‘Champ’ in Lake Champlain is considered to be a relative of the Loch Ness Monster. (Credit: CBS News)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\nwas only decades later in 1994 that the photo was revealed as a complete fake.\nThe body of the creature was nothing more than a toy submarine bought at\nWoolworth’s department store to which a neck and head made of wood putty were\nadded. The one-meter long counterfeit was simply floated into Loch Ness and\nphotographed, an object lesson in how easy it can be to fool millions of people\nwho want to be fooled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of\ncourse one fake, however famous doesn’t mean that there isn’t something unusual\nin Loch Ness. After all a lot of people have reported seeing something and\nthey’re not all hoaxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed they’re not; in fact there have been some legitimate scientific attempts to discover what, if anything is hiding in Loch Ness and a few of them have produced tantalizing hints of something. Perhaps the best known is the 1972 expedition organized by the Academy of Applied Science and led by Robert H. Rines. The team employed sonar apparatus in a methodical search of the loch for any large objects beneath the surface. Then, any time a large object was detected by the sonar an underwater camera with a floodlight recorded an image of the object. On August 8th the sonar detected a moving target some 6 to 9 meters in length. At the same time the underwater camera took a picture of what looked like diamond shaped ‘fin’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Two images of the ‘Fins’ of the Loch Ness Monster taken in 1972. (Credit: MIT)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That’s\nthe best scientific evidence for the existence of the Loch Ness monster.\nProblem is that the 6-9 meter target could very easily have been a school of\nsmall fish while the picture of the fin is so blurry that it could be almost\nanything. Still, a half dozen other investigations have produced nothing better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now a new approach has been used in the search for Nessie, environmental-DNA (eDNA). eDNA works this way, samples from any body of water will contain some genetic material from all of the species of animal or plant that live in that body of water. Analyzing that DNA tells scientists what species live in that water without<\/em> having to actually observe or capture a single specimen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Any animal whose excretions wind up in a body of water can be discovered using eDNA. (Credit: WildlifeSNPits)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Researchers\nfrom the University of Otago in New Zealand have performed such an analysis on\nover 200 water samples from various places in Loch Ness. In particular the\nscientists were looking for the presence of reptile DNA that would provide\nevidence for the existence of a population of plesiosaurs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study found DNA from some 3,000 species of plant and animal, even bacteria but no indication for reptile DNA of any kind. They also failed to find DNA for large species of fish such as shark, catfish or sturgeon, animals that have been suggested as possibly being responsible for the monster sightings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Professor Neil Gemmell with a sample of water for Loch Ness. No Nessie DNA was found. (Credit: Time Magazine)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What\nthe scientists did find was the DNA of the well-known animals of northern\nScotland, strong evidence that there is nothing unusual in the loch. The\nscientists also found what they considered to be a large amount of eel DNA in\nevery sample tested leading the team leader Neil Gemmill to suggest that a\ngiant eel might be the best candidate for Nessie. “It’s a least\nplausible,” Dr. Gemmill asserts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Loch Ness Monster nothing more than a big eel?\nNot much to show for almost 1500 years of hullabaloo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Loch Ness Monster may not get as much publicity as Flying Saucers or Bigfoot do but it’s really the same sort of phenomenon. A few hints of something strange in the historical record, a few sketchy sightings of something that can’t be identified. Once a couple of stories are published in the press it … Continue reading “The Loch Ness Monster is in the news again. Is there any actual evidence to support the existence of this legendary creature?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[842,841,840,843],"class_list":["post-2401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-uncategorized","tag-edna","tag-hoaxes","tag-loch-ness-monster","tag-paranormal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2411,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401\/revisions\/2411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}