Loch Ness Monster
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[edit] Definition
The Loch Ness monster, more commonly known as Nessie, is supposedly a large unidentified aquatic animal inhabiting Loch Ness. By judiciously selecting some accounts of what bits of Nessie look like, and ignoring others, it is possible to reconstruct her as something like a plesiosaur: this is certainly the interpretation which appeals most to cryptozoologists, and, for some reason, to some creationists: and it is as a plesiosaur that Nessie is most commonly depicted in popular images of her.
Nessie is invariably referred to as being female, although no-one's ever had a close enough look at the monster to find that out: she is female by convention only.
[edit] Habitat
Nessie lives in Loch Ness, Scotland, UK. Running along the line of an ancient geological fault, the loch is 23 miles long but only a mile wide: it reaches a depth of 750 feet. It is cold but does not freeze in winter; clouded with peat and nutrient-poor, its ecosystem is sparse. The loch has been in existence for only about 10,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age. Before that, the valley which now contains the loch was filled with an enormous glacier. The lake is visited by tourists and would-be spotters of Nessie in numbers estimated between half a million and four million per year.
[edit] Related Monsters
Although Nessie is the most famous of her breed, there are many other reports of lake monsters, some of which are similar to Nessie in some of the descriptions given, including Ogopogo in Lake Okanagan, Canada, Champ in Lake Champlain on the New York-Vermont border, South Bay Bessie in Lake Erie, Isshi in Lake Ikeda, Japan, Nahuelito in Nahuel Huapi Lake, Argentina, and the boringly-named Lake Tianchi Monster in Lake Tianchi.
The defining biological feature of this group is that no-one can ever, ever get a good look at them.
[edit] Origins
The first sighting of Nessie, like everything else about her, is controversial. There is a story supposedly dating to 565 in which St Columba drives a monster from the River Ness. However, no description of the “monster” is given, and it should be noted that the River Ness is quite shallow and could not accommodate any really substantial aquatic animal.
Many sources attribute the first sighting in modern times to one Dr D Mackenzie in 1871. However, no-one is able to identify a primary source for this story, only unreferenced secondary sources.
So the earliest identifiable claim of a monster in the loch is probably that of Mr and Mrs Mckay, in 1933, who reported seeing “an enormous animal rolling and plunging", as was reported by the ‘’Inverness Courier’’. A cynic would point out that the couple were local hoteliers, and that a supposed lake monster is amongst the cheapest forms of tourist attraction.
[edit] Discussion
Despite a steady trickle of reports of “seeing something moving in the water” over the years since 1933, skeptics remain, well, skeptical, of the existence of Nessie.
[edit] Is the Loch suitable for monsters?
Loch Ness seems a strangely dismal habitat to be the last refuge of a species facing extinction: Britain has other lakes with more temperate climates and richer in life; and it has even been questioned whether any creature the size of Nessie could manage to fulfill its energy requirements in such an impoverished environment.
Moreover, the isolation of the loch requires, not just one monster, but a breeding population of them going back for thousands of years. Conservation biologists, as a rule of thumb, use the 50/500 rule --- a species needs 50 members to survive in the short term, 500 to survive in the long term. This would require a lot of Nessies within the one habitat.
[edit] Absence of evidence
Most skeptics have heard the phrase "Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence". However, this needs a corollary, which is that if literally millions of people spend decades looking for evidence in exactly the place where you’d find it if it was there, and the most they can come up with are a few grainy blurred photographs of “something in the water moving”, then it seems likely that the McKay’s original story of “an enormous animal rolling and plunging" was, to put it mildly, unreliable: or at least unrepeatable.
Nor is it only amateur Nessie-spotters who keep an eye on the loch. Enthusiasts and skeptics alike have come to the loch with the best technology science can supply: sonar, submarines, underwater cameras and all the other paraphernalia of submarine biology. Yet after all that effort, we are still short one monster.
Indeed, given the dedicated care with which Loch Ness has been searched unsuccessfully for monsters, it is probably less likely to throw up some biological surprise that any other lake of similar volume anywhere else in the world.
[edit] Fakes and frauds
One blow to the hopes of Nessie enthusiasts is the revelation that the two most famous images of Nessie are, in fact, no such thing.
The most famous image of Nessie is certainly the so-called "Surgeon’s Photograph", which first appeared in the Daily Mail in 1934, attributed to Colonel Kenneth Wilson, a doctor. However, Nessie researchers David Martin and Alistair Boyd have a different account of the photograph’s origins. According to their book Nessie --- the Surgeon’s Photograph, the scene in the photograph was faked by one Marmaduke Wetherell, using a miniature model: this is according to the testimony of Wetherell’s stepson, Christian Spurling. Wetherell was, it seems, a big game hunter, who had been hired by the Daily Mail to find evidence of Nessie. The impressive footprint he discovered was shown by experts at the British Museum as that of a hippopotamus (made with a souvenir hippo’s-foot ashtray). Weatherell was derided as a clumsy faker, and the creation of the “Surgeon’s Photograph” seems to have been an act of revenge on the Daily Mail.
The other iconic image of Nessie is the close-up photograph of her flipper, the product of the 1972 expedition of Dr Rines. Unfortunately for cryptozoologists everywhere, the original photographs look very little like a flipper even with the aid of wishful thinking, pareidolia, and all the good will in the world. Not to be defeated, Dr Rines sent his footage to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, to be computer enhanced by one Alan Gillespie, an enthusiast for cryptozoology. However, the enhanced images also looked nothing like a flipper. It is difficult to say exactly who produced the image known to the public (no-one is wiling to take responsibility) but it seems certain that the iconic image known to the public is the result of wishful thinking to the point of fraud on the part of some human, rather than the impartial calculations of a computer.
However hopeful one may be for the discovery of a strange new (or, perhaps, ancient) species, it must be disheartening that what seemed to be the most convincing substantiating evidence cannot, in fact, be relied on.
[edit] Mistakes
There are a number of things that can/have been mistaken for the monster. Wash from power boats can take far longer to fade away than expected. This can create the impression of a large body moving just under the surface of the water. Floating logs are often mistaken for the monster. Another possible cause of sightings are Roe Deer. These are know to swim in the loch. From a distance these can look very monster-like, particularly in spring when their horns are partially grown.
[edit] Further Reading
The Loch Ness Mystery Solved by Ronald Binns
