The Loch Ness monster ... legend or reality?
Legends of huge snakes and monsters roaming the seas and lakes are passed down in many parts of the world.
In Scotland a lake called Loch Ness has become famous for being the home of one of these monsters Stories. The Loch Ness monster lived in the lake for hundreds of years and several persons believe they have seen "Nessie".
If "Nessie", this is the name of the monster, really existed, it could be a member of the plesiosaur family, a fish-eating marine reptiles such as the elasmosaurus that lived over 70 million years ago. The Loch Ness monster has been searched several times using scientific equipment, but has never been found.
The Loch Ness monster really exists, and its ancestors were swimming in Scotland's most famous lake as early as 150 million years ago. This believed a British pensioner, who discovered on the shore of the lake the remains of a prehistoric creature very similar to the portrait of the famous monster in the collective imagination. A long neck, a tiny head when compared to the gigantic body, a long and massive tail and four large fins, used as wings for swimming.
The fossil found by Gerald McSorley - 67 years old at that time, a former trader - belonged to a plesiosaur, a sea monster that lived in the Mesozoic Era. Several fossilized skeletons of this dinosaur have been discovered around the world almost completely intact.
There are those who believe that these animals of the Jursassic period had the ability to live in deep waters for a very long time. According to this thesis, plesiosaurs would roam undisturbed in the world's deepest oceans and lakes, such as Lake Champlain in the United States (where one was reportedly spotted in 1977) and Loch Ness itself.
But is it possible that plesiosaurs are still alive?
The plesiosaur is the image people have of Nessie
said paleontologist Lyall Anderson, curator of the National Museum in Edinburgh, referring to the Loch Ness monster. This fossil was found in the lake, so people can say this is the original monster. It's interesting. Too bad that 150 million years ago the Loch Ness Lake did not exist at all as it was formed during the last ice age, that is, during the last two million years. Those vertebrae, the scientist speculated, could have been transported into the lake by glacial movements.
THE LOCH NESS MONSTER ... Legend or reality?
Loch Ness, in Scotland, is considered the home of the most famous monster of all time. A creature that has been reported for more than 1400 years now.
Loch Ness constitutes the most important source of fresh water in all England. The lake is 40 kilometers long, two kilometers wide, and has an average depth of 150 meters, but with chasms reaching 300 meters. The enormous amount of water (about 66 million cubic meters) on one side communicates with the ocean through the Caledonian Canal, and on the other with the North Sea, by means of the River Ness. Like other lakes, it is the result of various erosion processes at the end of the last ice age, about ten thousand years ago.
The temperature of Loch Ness's water is low (6 to 7 degrees at the greatest depths) and never freezes. The water is dark, due to the presence of suspended peat particles: already ten meters from the surface the darkness is almost total.
The first report of the presence of a strange creature in Loch Ness's lake dates back to the year 565 AD.
Until the present day there has been no clear description of the monster. At least until 1934, when a London surgeon driving close to the lake took the first photograph of the monster; or at least, of what passed for one.
The photo shows a long neck arching over the water from a body, and had been taken, according to the surgeon, at a distance of 200-300 yards, near Invermoriston.
That first photograph was published in London's Daily Mail, provoking an avalanche of letters and a controversy that was destined to continue for several years. According to skeptics, the photo reproduced only a pile of plant matter brought to the surface by pockets of gas, or the tip of an otter's tail magnified by the photographer. Supporters of the monster thesis, on the other hand, said that the image matched perfectly the descriptions given by the many people who claimed to have seen the monstrous creature.
The same year, a panoramic road was built along the northern shore of the lake: visitors began to flock to the region and thus the accounts of appearances of the monster increases. The first major article on this subject is published in the Inverness Courier of April 14, 1933: in short the "Loch Ness monster" becomes an main subject of journalistic curiosity.
Autosuggestion may explain many cases of sightings as the very nature of the lake certainly does not help researchers: the waters are often calm, the surface smooth as oil, but the steep banks cast eerie shadows. Optical illusions abound, and a bird, a branch, or the wake left by a boat are enough to produce startling effects. Despite it, thousands of truly eerie eyewitness observations have been recorded at the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. Many are extremely detailed. The observed creature would have a long neck, humps on its back and would move from one point to 'another with great rapidity.
University student Arthur Grant saw it, very close by, on a full moon night in 1934. He said the monster's head looked like a truncated cone, and the creature seemed to move with lateral movements of a pair of posterior, membranous fins. Its neck was serpentiform, but what most impressed the student were the eyes: wide, full eyes embedded in the head. The animal large mandibles could very well have held a lamb or a goat, its skin, of a very dark gray, glistened, similar to that of whales ... this testimony ends like many others: it was filed away with a big question mark.
The first chronicler of the apparitions of "Nessie", as the monster was nicknamed, is considered Commander Rupert Gould. In 1934 Gould published "The Loch Ness Monster", advancing the hypothesis that it was an isolated specimen, trapped in the waters of the lake. Later, several authors would reject this explanation as numerous persons claimed to have observed several strange creatures.
Researchers also have a certain amount of documentation of unexplained observations, particularly echoes collected by sonar. In addition, they have observed that the observations are more frequent during the summer season, particularly at the mouths of the various rivers that flow into the lake.
There are a number of photographs of the monster, taken by persons who have seen something anomalous purely by chance, and by researchers who have organized photo hunts for Nessie.
It is actually very easy to make photomontages of monstrous-looking figures on a clear background. Moreover, many negatives, even when not manipulated in the darkroom, are of very poor quality, resulting from hasty focusing or the use of poor optics.
Cinematic films, on the other hand, are far more difficult to manipulate, and so more credit is given to them. Of all of them, two are truly extraordinary: the first film was shot by Tim Dinsdale, on April 23, 1960, at the mouth of the Foyers River: there a humpback is seen moving in the distance, then crossing the camera field again before diving. Analysis of the film concluded that the filmed object was likely to be moving, measuring 170 centimeters wide and presumably traveling at a speed of 16 kilometers per hour.
The second film is by Richard Raynor, made on June 13, 1967, at the northern edge of the lake: a trail is seen there, at the end of which a solid object appears, also animated.
Dinsdale's enthusiasm inflamed other researchers and helped pave the way for a more scientific approach to the problem of the monster's existence. In 1961, by request of two naturalists and Congressman David James, who became its head, the Bureau of Investigation into the Phenomena of Loch Ness was created. The bureau collected, monitored and published all reports of sightings and enlisted students and other volunteers to maneuver, during the summer months, cameras set up at strategic points all around the 40-kilometer shores of the lake. The field of view of each camera overlapped with that of neighbouring cameras, so that the entire lake was kept under continuous observation. But the evidence gathered in this way yielded no results, as did the footage taken by British and Japanese television èquipment, which had hoped to be able to record Nessie's appearances and behavior with the help of the latest modern scientific equipment.
It was not until 1970 that researchers began to take underwater photographs, which is not necessarily an advantage because of the muddy waters of the lake. The most interesting images were obtained by making use of an electronically triggered device, on which a strobe flash was mounted: in one of these photos a kind of fin can be seen, which, however, has nothing to do with any known kind of fin.
Six other negatives, obtained in 1975 by Professor Robert Rines of the Academy of Applied Sciences in Boston, show an image of something quite different from the hull of the boat to which the apparatus was attached: a "thing" that is continually the subject of discussion among supporters of the existence of the monster and skeptics.
Most interesting is the evidence for the existence of an unknown, living "creature" provided by analysis performed with sonar: developed during World War II to locate enemy underwater craft, sonar is, so to speak, an aquatic radar. Instead of emitting electromagnetic waves, it emits ultrasounds, sent back as echoes from all objects having a density different from that of the surrounding water. The stronger the difference in density, the greater the echo is.
Sonar has an advantage: in addition to recording the echo of solid objects that are underwater, it also picks up the echo of volumes of air. This feature allows even groups of fish to be easily detected: indeed, while living tissues have a density roughly identical to that of water and are therefore difficult to detect, the organisms of most aquatic vertebrates contain pockets of air (swim bladders for fish, lungs for mammals or reptiles) that are easily detectable.
The sonar devices used in the waters of Loch Ness, of a relatively simple type, were either hooked on the side of the boat for shallow water surveys, or on a "fish" (a kind of trailer) in the case of operations at greater depths. Even these instruments were not, however, able to provide real evidence of the existence of a possible monster: they can in fact record echoes produced by large fish, floating tree trunks, gas bubbles secreted by decaying debris, or even masses of water whose temperature (and therefore density) is different from that of the surrounding environment. The interferences are thus numerous. At most, a sonar is able to follow the possible movements of an object that sends back an echo, and thus to detect whether it is something alive or not and then, at a later time, to eventually identify the object.
In 1964, a team of experts from Oxford and Cambridge Universities measured a particular echo, much stronger than that generally produced by groups of fish. Three boats immediately begins the hunt, traversing the length and breadth of the entire Loch Ness and attempting to locate anything that might have returned an echo of that kind: they had numerous "contacts" but were unable to identify the source.
In 1968, a group of researchers from the University of Birmingham led by Professor D. G. Tucker, arrives at the shores of the lake with an automatic digital sonar. On August 28, at the bottom of the lake, "something" was detected moving at a speed of 12 kilometers per hour; a little later, another echo records a speed of 25 kilometers per hour. Clearly, this cannot be a groups of fish nor a large isolated fish.
The same year, the "Pisces", a small submarine of the research group "Oceanic Vickers", makes diving attempts in the lake. At a depth of 170 meters, it records an echo: the distance of object from the submarine was less than 200 meters, but when the Pisces reduces the distance to hundred meters the source of the echo disappears.
In 1968, the "Viperfish", a private submarine owned by Dan Taylor, begans the hunt of the monster. Its owner, after numerous sonar searches, planned not only to find the monster, but also to classified it in a precise zoological framework. In the murky waters of the lake, the vehicle will not prove of much use.
A study of the organic remains at the bottom of the Loch Ness's lake is also planned, and dredging attempts have already begun: if Loch Ness has been home to monsters for thousands of years, some carcasses must be found! This would help solve the essential enigma of this dark Scottish loch: what creature is hiding there? The answer can only be given after rigorous research, and by appealing to zoology, paleontology, geology and that bit of common sense and intuition that advances science.
Before we want to know the nature of the mysterious animal, a simple question must be answered: how did (if any) such creatures get into the Loch Ness's lake ?
The lake, located 16 meters above sea level is linked to it by the Ness River and the Caledonian Canal. Ten thousand years ago, when glaciers covered Scotland, the Loch Ness Fault must have had a wider path of communication with the sea but when the ground rose, the waters of the lake remained isolated. The animals have therefore been living there for less than ten thousand years, which, in terms of evolution, is but a blink of an eye.
Where did they come from? From other freshwater lakes? There were none nearby. From the sea? More likely. How ? Through the Ness River, like salmon that regularly swim up its course to spawn. Like eels that spend most of their lives in fresh water, then leave for the Sargasso Sea. For aquatic animals, a river is a pathway.
We have already seen that Loch Ness is characterized by remarkable thermal stability and a very low temperature; in the summer season, however, the surface waters can rise up to 12 degrees: this warmer mass always remains separated from the rest of the waters by the thermocline.
In such waters, nutrient sources should abound; one should find plants, organic debris, plankton and many fish there. But this is not the case. The shadow cast by the surrounding hills on waters that are already turbid by nature, the escarpment shorelines and the brevity of summer prevent aquatic plants from descending more than 3 meters below the surface of the lake.
If "Nessie" is herbivorous, it should therefore be able to find sufficient nutrients only near the shores of the lake, but appearances here have rarely occurred. In addition, all herbivores require a rather considerable amount of plants to survive: the rarity of aquatic plants on the shores of Loch ness would therefore suggest that "Nessie" is not such an animal.
So what? Do the alleged creatures that inhabit Loch Ness perhaps feed on plankton, like whales?
If one examines the density of the plankton in the Loch ness, the doubt arises that the loch creature could not have chosen it as its food. In fact, like all creatures living in very deep water, the Loch Ness is characterized by relative sterility. In addition, animals that make plankton their usual diet must be able to filter it (through baleen, like cetaceans), which implies physical characteristics that are completely different from those that seem to distinguish the Scottish loch monster: long neck and small head. Finally, in order to feed on plankton, an animal must be able to swim for a considerable time on the surface, where nourishment abounds: but most of the observations od "Nessie" say the brevity of its appearances.
Is it possible that this creature eats organic sediment of various kinds? Once again, one must keep in mind that creatures of cold water such as Loch Ness are generally devoid of them.
To sufficiently feed "Nessie" all that is left is fish: those migratory salmon that abound in Scotland. But, according to biologists, the lake seems to be characterized by considerable sterility, caused both by its very location (which does not allow it to receive much light), and by relatively still waters and an inadequate amount of that plankton which, together with small freshwater invertebrates, constitutes the salmon's basic food.
But the monster, if it exists, has to eat! What, perhaps the salmon themselves, since very often the appearances of "Nessie" have had as a backdrop the mouths of the rivers that flow into Loch Ness, at a time that corresponds to the ascent of the salmon to the places where they spawn.
Another question that cannot be negleted is: assuming it exists, what kind of animal could this monster be?
It is certainly not an invertebrate, but can it be said with equal confidence that it is not an amphibian? Indeed, amphibians do not need to go out to the surface often, they hibernate and breed underwater; but there are not and never have been (at least as far as we know) marine amphibians. That is, if "Nessie" comes from the sea at all.
Thus, only three hypotheses remain:
- it is a reptile
- a mammal
- or a fish
The first one is undoubtedly the most popular, but it clashes with several biological arguments. First, the temperature of the waters is too low for a reptile to survive; second, a reptile would be forced to surface to breathe or to come out of the water to lay eggs.
The reptile that would most closely match the descriptions of "Nessie" would be the Plesiosaur: predating the Coelacanth, it has left no fossils for more than 70 million years. It is not inconceivable that such an animal could have adapted to Loch Ness conditions. Reptiles and mammals of the secondary age had impermeable skin, and their respiratory system included both lungs and a system that ensured some freedom of underwater action. The mammal track seems the most likely, however. Most seals, for example, are comfortable even in waters with very low temperatures. Why, then, could the creature in the lake not be a species of very long-necked seal? But with this hypothesis comes the valid opposition posed by the problem of reproduction: seals mate on land, where they raise their young. They also need to emerge regularly to breathe.
Would the monster then be a fish? All other considerations aside, this might explain the rare surface appearances. Unfortunately, most observations do not describe "Nessie" as a fish. For their part, residents of the Loche Ness region assert that it might be a "giant eel" of unknown species.
And, indeed, sonar surveys can suggest movements comparable to those of eels.
How come it cannot be found?
Most likely the monster, if it really exists, could sneak into hundreds of tunnels, and it would take too long to inspect them all.
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