Loch Ness Monster - A Theory/Thought

For years now stories and fables have abounded with tales of a monstrous beast that lurks beneath the choppy waters of Loch Ness, which have spawned countless endeavors to find the fabled beast.

Through the years many photos have been taken that have been proven to be fake, while others have been snapped that are, as of yet, un-explainable.



Above is one of the best photos of the beast. However it is well docummented that around the time this picture was taken, an elephant lived near the loch and would often take a swim. Most believe the picture above is that of an elephant trunk and head, while the rest of the animals body is underwater - which is how elephants swim.



I was inspired to write this thread, based off the recent findings and evidences of the fabled beast: a sonar picture that shows a large “something” that was following a boat about 75 feet beneath the surface of Loch Ness.



www.dailymail.co.uk... (Full story here.)

It is unclear what type of creature Nessie may be, but it has been theorized that the animal is a Plesiosaurus, which lived during the early part of the Jurassic period and have been thought to be extinct.



What the creature is, in my opinion, is of little concern to tracking the beast – as to what type of animal it is: mammal, reptile, or other. Further into this post, I will cover my thoughts on why Nessie has been mostly undetectable on a large scale.

While many techniques have been used to try and locate Nessie, ranging from cameras to audio recordings, no other technique has been more widely used than sonar.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with sonar, it is a method for detecting objects underwater by using sound waves. When the sound waves strike an object, they are sent back to the source – and are represented by “blip” on a sonar graph.

But mankind is not the only species in the world to use sonar, at least in the strictest since.

Marine mammals have done this for countless years. Dolphins, Whales, and other species rely on natural sonar for hunting, looking, and communication.

The waters of Loch Ness are far too frigid to support reptile life for extended periods, this leads me to believe that The Loch Ness Monster may very well, and most likely, be a mammal.

Since we know that most marine mammals are equipped with echo-location, it stands to reason for me that Nessie may be equipped with the same arsenal as other species.

As stated above: marine mammals use echolocation (natural sonar) as a means to hunt, amongst other things.

My theory is that Nessie may very well hear the sonar from boats above, and perceive it as a larger animal and threat – and so go into hiding on the floor of the loch. Here the animal would grow very still, so as to avoid being spotted by it’s perceived predator. Or the sonar may just be driving the beast away. I also theorize that there may be underwater caverns that the beast can hide in, or perhaps live in to elude detection.

Careful studies have been performed, which indicate that sonar does indeed affect marine mammals – and mostly in the negative: en.wikipedia.org...

Some marine animals, such as whales and dolphins, use echolocation or "biosonar" systems to locate predators and prey. It is conjectured that active sonar transmitters could confuse these animals and interfere with basic biological functions such as feeding and mating. A recent study has shown that whales experience decompression sickness, a disease that forces nitrogen into gas bubbles in the tissues and is caused by rapid and prolonged surfacing. Although whales were originally thought to be immune to this disease, sonar has been implicated in causing behavioral changes that can lead to decompression sickness.

In conclusion – I believe there is something worth looking into at Loch Ness. Perhaps there is a massive beast lurking beneath the waters, or it may just be a fanciful idea lurking within the imaginations of man.

What are the odds that people would create a fantasy story (many people some who had never even met each other), and would all lie to propagate that story, and that the subject of the story just happened by chance to match up with an actual real dinosaur that actually existed?

The oldest story attributed to Loch Ness (although tenuous), is this 7th century example:

The earliest report of a monster associated with the vicinity of Loch Ness appears in the Life of St. Columba by Adomnán, written in the 7th century.[16] According to Adomnán, writing about a century after the events he described, the Irish monk Saint Columba was staying in the land of the Picts with his companions when he came across the locals burying a man by the River Ness. They explained that the man had been swimming the river when he was attacked by a "water beast" that had mauled him and dragged him under. They tried to rescue him in a boat, but were able only to drag up his corpse. Hearing this, Columba stunned the Picts by sending his follower Luigne moccu Min to swim across the river. The beast came after him, but Columba made the sign of the cross and commanded: "Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once."[17] The beast immediately halted as if it had been "pulled back with ropes" and fled in terror, and both Columba's men and the pagan Picts praised God for the miracle.

loch ness monster wiki

The famous photo you posted is called "Surgeon's photograph", and apparently was shot in 1934.

I know I know, most people think it's all hoaxed. But that's their opinion based on faith.
We really don't know still even to this day if Nessie is real, it's totally plausible and physically possible so it's still on the table in my assessment.

reply to post by muzzleflash


I agree with everything you said.

I think that there has been enough sightings to entertain the thought that this creature could be real.

Hopefully one day we will know the full truth.

Thanks for posting.

Here is some more reading for those interested. It was just what I have been looking into for the past 10minutes.

Kelpie wiki

This is the mythical "sea horse" creature. It's descriptions vary greatly, but one thing is for certain, this mythological creature appears virtually all over the place. Sometimes it's good, but usually it's said to kill people, mostly travelers or children.

The kelpie is a supernatural water horse from Celtic folklore that is believed to haunt the rivers and lochs of Scotland and Ireland; the name may be from Scottish Gaelic cailpeach or colpach "heifer, colt".

In Orkney a similar creature was called the nuggle, and in Shetland a similar creature was called the shoopiltee, the njogel, or the tangi. On the Isle of Man it is known as the cabbyl-ushtey (Manx Gaelic for "water horse", compare to Irish capall uisge) or the glashtin. In Wales, a similar creature is known as the Ceffyl Dŵr. It also appears in Scandinavian folklore where in Sweden it is known by the name Bäckahästen, the brook horse. In Norway it is called nøkken, where the horse shape is often used, but is not its true form. In the Faroe Islands it is called Nykur and in Iceland it is called nykur or nennir. Another similar Scottish water horse is the each uisge, which also appears in Ireland.In Greek mythology, Poseidon is the god of the oceans and of horses, and took the form of a horse to seduce Demeter.

Ceffyl Dwr wiki

Ceffyl Dŵr is a water horse in Welsh folklore, similar to the Kelpie in Scotland.

Knucker wiki

Knucker is a dialect word for a kind of water dragon, living in knuckerholes in Sussex, England. The word comes from the Old English nicor which means "water monster" and is used in the poem Beowulf.

Now for the really crazy part:
Hippocamp wiki

The hippocamp or hippocampus (plural: hippocamps or hippocampi; Greek: ἱππόκαμπος, from ἵππος, "horse" and κάμπος, "monster"[1]), often called a sea-horse[2] in English, is a mythological creature shared by Phoenician[3] and Greek mythology, though the name by which it is recognised is purely Greek; it became part of Etruscan mythology. It has typically been depicted as a horse in its forepart with a coiling, scaly, fishlike hindquarter.

These "water horses" are said to only put their eye out of the water to spy on the surface.
Also they are said to have "wings" in various incarnations (by the way, Pleisiosaur's flippers might look like wings to the untrained eye).

The mythology behind river/lake monsters is really interesting.

Oh also, the Hippocamp was both fresh and salt water capable. Just like the Pleisiosaur is speculated to have been capable of.

I haven't ever heard of some of those - very interesting indeed.

I think a lot of myth is spawned from some type of sighting - even if the sighting was just not understood.

Thanks for the info!

Nessie, given that he/she/it exists, doesn't have to be a fully-fledged, cold blooded reptile. Leaning to the Plesiosaur concept doesn't immediately rule out the notion of this species being something of a hybrid between what we today know as reptiles and those we know as marine mammals. The more we learn about those creatures of so long ago, the more we have come to learn that they were far more diverse than we originally thought.

But back here in reality, Nessie is in the good company of Big Foot, Chupacabra, Moth Man and the Jersey Devil; many people have seen them over many years but even so, we have little more than bits and pieces of real evidence to support their existence.

At this point, I'd accept that Neesie could be anything from that Plesiosaur to some large freshwater form of squid, to the Jet Puff Marshmallow Man out for a swim.

Keeping an open mind on this kind of subject is a good thing.

Originally posted by redoubt
Nessie, given that he/she/it exists, doesn't have to be a fully-fledged, cold blooded reptile. Leaning to the Plesiosaur concept doesn't immediately rule out the notion of this species being something of a hybrid between what we today know as reptiles and those we know as marine mammals. The more we learn about those creatures of so long ago, the more we have come to learn that they were far more diverse than we originally thought.

But back here in reality, Nessie is in the good company of Big Foot, Chupacabra, Moth Man and the Jersey Devil; many people have seen them over many years but even so, we have little more than bits and pieces of real evidence to support their existence.

At this point, I'd accept that Neesie could be anything from that Plesiosaur to some large freshwater form of squid, to the Jet Puff Marshmallow Man out for a swim.

Keeping an open mind on this kind of subject is a good thing.

I agree....

Except it's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man...

Originally posted by redoubt
Nessie, given that he/she/it exists, doesn't have to be a fully-fledged, cold blooded reptile. Leaning to the Plesiosaur concept doesn't immediately rule out the notion of this species being something of a hybrid between what we today know as reptiles and those we know as marine mammals. The more we learn about those creatures of so long ago, the more we have come to learn that they were far more diverse than we originally thought.

Well the duck billed platypus is considered a mammal, as it has fur.

However it has a duck's bill (although anatomically different), and it lays eggs.

Also it is venomous, and it has DNA closer to bird than mammal.

In 2004, researchers at the Australian National University discovered the platypus has ten sex chromosomes, compared with two (XY) in most other mammals (for instance, a male platypus is always XYXYXYXYXY),[64] although given the XY designation of mammals, the sex chromosomes of the platypus are more similar to the ZZ/ZW sex chromosomes found in birds.

The platypus genome also has both reptilian and mammalian genes associated with egg fertilisation.[34][66] Since the platypus lacks the mammalian sex-determining gene SRY, the mechanism of sex determination remains unknown.[67] A draft version of the platypus genome sequence was published in Nature on 8 May 2008, revealing both reptilian and mammalian elements, as well as two genes found previously only in birds, amphibians, and fish.

Let's see here, it has webbed feet too. And this about body temp:

The platypus has an average body temperature of about 32 °C (90 °F) rather than the 37 °C (99 °F) typical of placental mammals.[17] Research suggests this has been a gradual adaptation to harsh environmental conditions on the part of the small number of surviving monotreme species rather than a historical characteristic of monotremes.[18][19]

So it's actually a bit colder than typical placental mammals.

Modern platypus young have three-cusped molars, which they lose before or just after leaving the breeding burrow;[20][21] adults have heavily keratinised pads in their place.[11] The platypus jaw is constructed differently from that of other mammals, and the jaw-opening muscle is different.[11] As in all true mammals, the tiny bones that conduct sound in the middle ear are fully incorporated into the skull, rather than lying in the jaw as in cynodonts and other premammalian synapsids. However, the external opening of the ear still lies at the base of the jaw.[11] The platypus has extra bones in the shoulder girdle, including an interclavicle, which is not found in other mammals.[11] It has a reptilian gait, with legs that are on the sides of the body, rather than underneath.[11] When on land, it engages in knuckle-walking to protect the webbing between its toes.[22]

All I am saying is that if this freak of nature, this reptile bird mammal thing, the duck billed platypus exists in real life, than a left over dinosaur type creature like a pleisiosaur is really not that far fetched.

Evolution theorists are still struggling to explain the platypus to this day, it's a real mystery and the implications of it's possibilities are that we may have to re-write the entire theory of how mammals evolved. These monotremes could be the original missing link between birds and mammals.

Or another possibility is that aliens created life on Earth, and they invented the platypus as a joke or something.

Oh and here is the source where I quoted from:
Platypus wiki

Originally posted by MentorsRiddle

I agree....

Except it's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man...

I stand corrected

reply to post by redoubt


HAHAHA

thanks for the thread .. i don't hear much of nessie these days .. thought it was forgotten about

a friend and i went to loch ness at 2am one morning ... it was absolutely pitch black, except for the moonlight shimmering on the surface of the loch ... we never saw the 'monster' ... but .. i did see a UFO ...

a light hanging in the sky .. just above us .. then came down, at a diagonal angle .. with a constant slow speed .. no acceleration .. no arc in the angle of descent ... completely silent ... it hovered just above the water in front of us ... and then shot off swiftly up into the sky .. again at a diagonal angle ... but kinda opposite to angle of descent ... and still no sound ..

sorry i know it doesnt really relate to your thread .. but ive never really told anyone of my loch ness ufo story before ..

ahhh ... just a thought ... weird i never thought of this til now ...
if there is some big creature in loch ness .. i wonder if the craft i saw .. was paying a wee quick visit ... a quick 'scan' ...
well sounds good in my wee reality

reply to post by Segenam


Thanks for sharing that story

I think there are many unexplainable things in our world - and our human minds try our best to explain them.

Who knows - maybe aliens are biologists from another planet, and Nessie is on their list of endangered animals on earth to look at

reply to post by Segenam


Ya that is a cool story, thanks for sharing.

I like the post above that suggests maybe the UFO is here to check up on it's old pal Nessie for some type of biologist goal. That is plausible and also quite a funny thought.

And yes it's rather sad we don't hear about Nessie much anymore these days.
Also Champ, Mokele Mbembe, etc.

I am very open to the possibility that a few groups of breeding populations may have been left over since the "extinction" of the dinos. My main crux for this assumption is the discovery of the Coelacanth still breeding to this day, despite it's assumed vast old age. And it's amazing how it hasn't changed much over that period of time as well.

There are many "ancient extinct creatures" that could still be alive in very small numbers and we just haven't documented and proven their existence yet. They say often times we haven't explored 75%+ of the Earth yet, well it seems fairly reasonable considering.

Look up the second Surgeon's photo. Same creature, slightly different angle, and the neck position changes. Something those claiming it's a fake tend to ignore. They want people to forget he took TWO pictures. Having studied the Loch Ness monster most of my life, I never heard any reports of an elephant hanging out there. Not sure that's a credible report. These days, a lot of stuff gets posted online as real, that wasn't in any of the earlier, more current to the times reports. It's an interesting idea, but I don't buy it.

Originally posted by muzzleflash
What are the odds that people would create a fantasy story (many people some who had never even met each other), and would all lie to propagate that story, and that the subject of the story just happened by chance to match up with an actual real dinosaur that actually existed?

Pretty darn big. Replace dinosaur with practically anything, and you have the basis of most folk lore.

reply to post by UnexplainedMonsters


We do care about that.

That is the precise reason why this link is on the bottom of every page:

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These things happen sometimes, particularly on forums of this size. We have no way to see every post and we rely on our readers to inform us when something is wrong and needs to be corrected.

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Thank you.

Originally posted by UnexplainedMonsters
its alright for you to hotlink to my pictures on my website, but I can't post a reply with a link to my website?

If you'd take a moment to review our guidelines, we don't allow inline embedding of images from other websites (except for image hosting sites and a short list of others).

We also don't allow members to register with the same name as the domain/site they run.