Loch Ness Monster

The **Loch Ness Monster**, affectionately known as *Nessie*, is an enormous, ostensibly reptilian animal occasionally reported to dwell deep beneath the surface of Loch Ness, a 56km2 freshwater lake located in the Scottish Highlands. A member of the Cryptozoological Big 5 along with the sasquatch, yeti, chupacabra, and mothman, Nessie is without a doubt the most famous alleged lake monster in the world and one of Scotland's most famous 'residents'.

## History

Eyewitness descriptions of the beast generally describe it as resembling a plesiosaur, an order of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles. Features of the plesiosaurs often attributed to Nessie are a long serpentine neck, two pairs of paddle-like flippers for propulsion, and a long muscular tail. Other features shared with no known plesiosaurs are two ossicone-like horns on its head and the row of small humps running down its back (while the scientific community can't rule out that any plesiosaurs had these features, no known fossils yet discovered have featured them). Coloration is usually said to be dark black or brown, although sightings are generally just quick glimpses at a hump emerging from the water.

Other than eyewitness testimony, there is currently no verifiable evidence of the creature's existence. Alleged videos and photos exist, but they are usually of dubious quality, only show the creature's alleged humps, and can often be explained by floating logs or hoaxes. One such photograph, dubbed the "surgeon's photograph", was allegedly taken in 1934 by British surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson and quickly became the most iconic image of the Loch Ness monster ever taken. However, it was eventually revealed in the 1990s to have been an elaborate hoax on the part of Wilson and several associates. Numerous sonar studies of the lake, in which teams of boats use advanced sonar technology to scan the volume of the lake, have turned up nothing substantial; while the occasional anomalous shape has been detected, it has always been explained as a sunken log or rock or a bloom of algae.

The hypothesis among cryptozoologists that the creature is a surviving plesiosaur is generally dismissed as preposterous by the scientific community. While it is not currently known whether or not plesiosaurs were warm-blooded, the loch would certainly be too cold for a cold-blooded reptile. In addition, plesiosaurs, like all reptiles, breathe air and thus one would expect the frequency of sightings to be very high given the level of tourism at the loch and the frequency with which the creature(s) would need to breathe. Another large problem with this hypothesis is that the loch as it is known today only formed approximately 10,000 years ago, over 65 million years after the last known plesiosaurs died out in the KT extinction. Nessie proponents have suggested that a surviving plesiosaur could have entered the inland lake through an underground tunnel leading to the ocean, but no such tunnel has been found.

Skeptics have proposed the idea of giant eels being the prime suspect for cases of mistaken identity. European eels can be found in the loch and while they usually only grow to just over two feet in length, unusually large specimens of nearly six feet have been found. Other than intentional hoaxes, potential explanations include disturbances on the water's surface caused by the release of underwater methane, misidentification of floating logs or other debris, and even seals or sea lions that had come too far inland from the sea.