Is the Loch Ness Monster real?

This has been a raging argument for a long time. What’s weird about this is that it defies reason. How could a prehistoric creature exist in the Loch Ness for so long? That’s a great question.

The Loch Ness is a huge, deep, freshwater body of water in Scotland. It’s 22 square miles in size with an average depth of 432 feet and is 755 feet at its deepest. It’s basically a lake that sits in a giant tear or fault from earthquake activity that goes back 400 million years. The Loch is only ten thousand years old, a gift from the last ice age in the form of a giant glacier that melted, and it has a flat bottom with sediment approximately 25 feet deep sitting on a hard clay base. The Loch is blocked by glacial sediment, so there’s no way in our out of it.

Nessie, or the Loch Ness Monster, is a Cryptid, a mythical giant creature that has not been verified by science, and in fact there have been other monsters reported in other Scottish Highlands. Sightings of this creature go back to 1872 and extend to the present. Hugh Gray’s blurry photo on November 12, 1933 suggests a water creature with a long tail and a thick body that resembles an eel.

Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynecologist, took the most iconic photo of the Loch Ness Monster that most people are familiar with. This photo is referred to as The Surgeon’s Photograph. It shows a large dinosaur-like creature floating in the water. This creature has a long slender neck and a large body. This photograph has been declared a fake or hoax.

There are several movies that show the creature. These have also been debunked; however, the Discovery Channel documentary featured the Dinsdale movie from 1960. A careful analysis of this movie does seem to indicate that it’s legitimate. It shows a hump crossing the Loch Ness, leaving a big wake. Some think it was an animation.

There have been several expeditions to find the monster going back to 1934. Some of these included sonar scans. As expected these showed some large object floating around in the Loch Ness, but any conclusions as to what these were is open to interpretation.

Many of the sightings have been shown to be hoaxes.

Many people have said that they saw the monster, and some have even claimed to have been affected by it, as in having their dog eaten by it. Bummer!

Let’s assume that this creature is a Plesiosaur, an extinct Mesozoic marine reptile. They were common in the Jurassic Period and they existed up to the end of the Cretaceous Period that ended 65 million years ago. This is where we have a problem with an example of this species being the Loch Ness creature.

First of all, one would have to have this Plesiosaur creature that became extinct 65 million years ago stay around until at least 10,000 years ago. That’s a long time. Where would it have survived for so long? No one seems to have an answer to that question. The other question is: how did it get into the Loch Ness?

There have been other suggestions: Pinniped, an aquatic mammal like a giant seal; Invertebrate such as a bristleworm; Greenland shark, a species that can be as long at 20 feet; Amphibian like a long-necked newt.

The problem is that no one has captured any of these in Loch Ness. I suppose that anything is possible, but it appears that Nessie is just a fun myth. Hopefully, someone will establish the truth. I ascribe to the Science Channel’s mantra: Question everything.

Thanks for reading.