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Legend of Loch Ness Monster Will Be Tested With DNA Samples (apnews.com)
The stories seem as tall as the lake is deep. For hundreds of years, visitors to Scotland's Loch Ness have described seeing a monster that some believe lurks in the depths. But now the legend of "Nessie" may have no place left to hide. From a report: A New Zealand scientist is leading an international team to the lake next month, where they will take samples of the murky waters and conduct DNA tests to determine what species live there. University of Otago professor Neil Gemmell says he's no believer in Nessie, but he wants to take people on an adventure and communicate some science along the way. Besides, he says, his kids think it's one of the coolest things he's ever done. One of the more far-fetched theories is that Nessie is a long-necked plesiosaur that somehow survived the period when dinosaurs became extinct. Another theory is that the monster is actually a sturgeon or giant catfish. Many believe the sightings are hoaxes or can be explained by floating logs or strong winds.
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If nothing else comes from it, at least there will be a snapshot of the current level of biodiversity in the lake. Which could be useful for future planning if there is ever a algae bloom or other problem that arises. They could look back at the test and track where the problem first showed up.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
One of the more far-fetched theories is that Nessie is a long-necked plesiosaur that somehow survived the period when dinosaurs became extinct. Another theory is that the monster is actually a sturgeon or giant catfish. Many believe the sightings are hoaxes or can be explained by floating logs or strong winds.
There is no giant monster. It's a nice little fun story based on no actual credible evidence but it does bring in tourism dollars. (gee wonder why they keep the story going... $$$) It's fed by the same sorts of idiots who buy into conspiracy theories, bigfoot sightings, and who forget what the U in UFO stands for. The notion that it could be some sort of plesiosaur is just absurd because there would have to be a population of them and that would be impossible to hide even in an ocean much less 7.5 km^3 of water. It's people seeing what they want to see. Nothing more.
Oh, lord. You seriously think that we will finally put the lunatics to bed with a DNA test. And you seriously believe that they even believe in DNA.
For god's(tm) sake, there is still a Flat Earth Society.
Though I do sort of love it when smart people get trolled like this.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
The clue is in the name. Loch Ness. not Lake Ness. Scotand, famously only has one lake, the reast are Lochs although this is not strictly true.
Is that "Nessia" is an underwater submarine operation being conducted by the "deep state" in order to manipulate the fractious Scottish people into supporting the new and improved Monarchy.
In reality University of Otago professor Neil Gemmell is a Hydra agent and he's introducing a catfish virus that produces the super-soldier serum into the lake to breed an army of land locked weaponized catfish and to destabilize the Louisiana Gumbo hegemony. Otago is a secret country similar to Wakanda, that is the headquarters of Hydra. Neil Gemmell is professor of the Dark Arts at the university.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Nessie left for outer space to visit the Octopus world. Octopodes are just here until their semester ends.
-Dave
And I'm not sure that he would disagree with you ...
In other words, no, he doesn't expect to find it, but he's going to do some interesting science, try to educate the public, and please his kids.
Sounds like he's just being honest about it, and sneaking in some science for people.
Yeah and also aliens don't have DNA so it won't even register!
One of the more far-fetched theories is that Nessie is a long-necked plesiosaur that somehow survived the period when dinosaurs became extinct. Another theory is that the monster is actually a sturgeon or giant catfish. Many believe the sightings are hoaxes or can be explained by floating logs or strong winds.
There is no giant monster. It's a nice little fun story based on no actual credible evidence but it does bring in tourism dollars. (gee wonder why they keep the story going... $$$) It's fed by the same sorts of idiots who buy into conspiracy theories, bigfoot sightings, and who forget what the U in UFO stands for. The notion that it could be some sort of plesiosaur is just absurd because there would have to be a population of them and that would be impossible to hide even in an ocean much less 7.5 km^3 of water. It's people seeing what they want to see. Nothing more.
I, don't disagree with you, but playing the Donald's advocate:
What if there were some huge undocumented caves somewhere off the depths of the lake that contained something essential for the Pleiosaurs to survive. They don't normally leave the caves, but occasionally one does... they get sick, rise to the surface and get spotted by tourists before dying and sink to the bottom where they are eaten by fish and other organisms.
Yeah, nonsense I know... but theoretically possible
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Why would it need to be a population of them? You mean to tell me plesiosaurs don't have lifespans of a few million years? I'm shocked!
#DeleteFacebook
Aliens do exist and they're all being used by the Japanese cartoon porn industry.
#DeleteFacebook
Why bother.
I, don't disagree with you, but playing the Donald's advocate:
What if there were some huge undocumented caves somewhere off the depths of the lake that contained something essential for the Pleiosaurs to survive. They don't normally leave the caves, but occasionally one does... they get sick, rise to the surface and get spotted by tourists before dying and sink to the bottom where they are eaten by fish and other organisms.
Yeah, nonsense I know... but theoretically possible
What if God just pops up to play with giant plesiosaur puppets periodically? I mean, seems unlikely, but theoretically possible.
The price of the genetic testing will be about $3.50.
Jeremy Wade checked it out.
Lochness connects to the ocean and occasionally gets seals, sturgeon, killer whales and dolphins.
Case closed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There's a conspiracy theory that many "extinct" animals and cryptozoology animals are actually just things which evolved the ability to become invisible. The mechanism is actually known - the company Quantum Stealth makes it, but it's virtually impossible to scale up (it requires chip fabrication technologies to make transistor-scale resonators at the wavelength of light over an entire surface of an object and/or through it. Interestingly, life is REALLY good at making nano-scale devices and taking advantage of quantum effects, Even the photosynthesis mechanism in all organisms capable of drawing energy from the sun utilizes the same effect in the Quantum Stealth technology to a lesser degree. If there were a gene to make proteins which function as those quantum resonators at the right wavelength and it got transposed into the spot for melanin you'd absolutely get an invisible creature (at least at visible wavelengths.) That theory suggests that the Bigfoot creatures and such seen are those with a pigment deficiency akin to albinism leading to a lack of the cloaking protein.
Could be entropy in action. Unlikely but possible.
Could also be a secret portal to The Land That Time Forgot.
The butthurt is strong with this one.
So if they catch one, thwy will be able to identify it.
I think he's got a better chance of winning lotto
Ah, but what if they were capable of parthenogenesis, but only one of their clutch survives siblicide (low resources driving it) to reach adulthood, which is assured as their natural predators died out millions of years ago. Then one day the young supplants the old and the cycle continues - Nessie is dead, Long Live Nessie....
The original Loch Ness Monster has been expired 15 megannum, and is rotting like a corpse in Patagonia~
I, don't disagree with you, but playing the Donald's advocate:
What if there were some huge undocumented caves somewhere off the depths of the lake that contained something essential for the Pleiosaurs to survive. They don't normally leave the caves, but occasionally one does... they get sick, rise to the surface and get spotted by tourists before dying and sink to the bottom where they are eaten by fish and other organisms.
Yeah, nonsense I know... but theoretically possible
What if God just pops up to play with giant plesiosaur puppets periodically? I mean, seems unlikely, but theoretically possible.
Not theoretically possible because he doesn't exist.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Last time I was there I friended a few locals at a pub, and the gist of it is that they dislike all nessie stuff, and think it overshadow their region and its history. Basically if you talk to the local they will barely mention it, some don't even do (and if you DO mention it you get the "tourist idiot" stamp and they won't talk to you). There are a few selling trinkets but you speak to most local, you pretty much the impression Nessie's story is a plague. As for "100 of years" that is a load of BS. There is a few story here and there and some hint at a very small monster (human sized roughly) but in reality until start of the 20th century (about 1930-1940) you pretty much have zero tradition of it. It only exploded with the Surgeon hoax photo.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Tell me, what American town is University of Otago in?
That's dumb. Obviously they're aliens, and the ones who get spotted are the poor sods whose personal cloaking devices ran out of batteries.
"Albinism" indeed!
Statistics favor there being no Loch Ness monster. Back in the latter half of the 1900s, about 100,000 people visited the lake each year. Only a few percent of them had cameras, and almost none of them had video cameras.
In the 2010s, about 200,000 people visited the lake each year. And nearly all of them had cameras with video capability. So statistically, you'd expect the number of photos purporting to show Nessie each year to have increased by about 100-fold, and the number of videos (i.e. mysterious ripples on the surface) to have increased 1000- or 10,000-fold.
No such increases have happened (and in fact the photographer of the most famous photo from the 1900s has come out and admitted he faked it). That makes it highly likely that there is no monster, and that most of the "sightings" in the 1900s were faked.
New Zealand scientists in Scotland are there to prove American culture is right.
Even he admits this, its an excuse to take a vacation to Scotland, probably on someone else's dime.
Lake Champlain supposedly has a monster known as Champ. The story is that Samuel de Champlain saw it when he first discovered the lake.
I saw something suspicious in two nearby lakes, Lake George in New York and Lake Bomoseen in Vermont. What at first appeared like a large creature with humps was actually several pike or sturgeon travelling nose to tail just barely under the surface.
You'll never get anyone to agree on a single topic ever, especially one as well wrapped in mystery and myth. So why are you giving that kind of thought even a single second of your consideration? Be stoic about it and understand that some people are going to go against the evidence just to go against the evidence. It might not be a good thing (although a lot of progress has been made by questioning the norm through time) but it's going to be ok.
As for the flat erathers? That's mostly what it is, a trolling. Again, let it go. We have more of a problem with people who think they understand science but really don't than those who thumb their nose at science or use it as a form of mockery. I had just seen one of many Facebook groups yesterday that was trying to pass itself off as a science group that had meme after meme with no backing articles that were nothing more than propaganda aimed at a bunch of know-nothings who are desperate to come off as learned people and sway their political position on any matter by mixing a bit of "sciencey" nonsense with blunt statements about politics. Each posting was getting thousands of likes even though not a single one had any worthwhile content. That's the danger here. I've seen it while doing public science outreach, I've seen it in educational situations and I've seen it in supposed protests about scientific matters. The would-be nerds are many and they're very vocal and they're (normally) very wrong about the science but they're too misinformed to know how wrong they really are.
Yes, because no other country has ever elected a shitty leader. If anything this makes the U.S. more European than anything else in recent history.
Not necessarily because you are presupposing that the Loch Ness monsters behavior wouldn't change. Perhaps these creatures have survived by being very shy and elusive and if there are more tourists with eager camera snapping behavior, they just might stay below the surface. Or, global warming is causing them to not surface much anymore, etc.
Although, I agree with you more than the argument above.
What if there were some huge undocumented caves somewhere off the depths of the lake that contained something essential for the Pleiosaurs to survive. They don't normally leave the caves, but occasionally one does... they get sick, rise to the surface and get spotted by tourists before dying and sink to the bottom where they are eaten by fish and other organisms.
Yeah, nonsense I know... but theoretically possible
Pleiosaurs breath air. Sure, they might hang out in caves a lot of the time for a food supply, but underwater caves make for uncomfortable breathing conditions for a large animal, even if a few happen to have air.
There is an actual good explanation for the legends, which boil down to credible reports of surprising waves on apparently windless days. The loch is basically a very long and very straight lake. If there were a very gentle and steady breeze, the entire lake could be "tilted" by the wind -- imperceptible to the observer, but there would be some amount of energy stored by gravity. What happens if the wind suddenly stops? You can get unexpectedly large waves propagating down miles of lake, waves that might be difficult to perceive one place but easy to see a mile down. From the observers point of view, the wind change from nothing to nothing, and, lo and behold! big waves appeared over there. Waves so big and sudden that the "only" explanation is a large animal.
I think they're "tall tales"...
....I didn't know shadows and reflections had DNA.
There has never been a better time to buy your Nessie stuffed sea creature collection, bauble-head memorabilia, creepy DNA ("not to be mistaken for genuine DNA from any mythical undersea creatures") VHS tapes of Bigfoot claiming to witness an 'up-close-and-personal' encounter with the creature
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Sir Curt Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its residents, and all those who seek a peaceful existence with our underwater ally.
Nessie never was DNA compliant ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I doubt anything could be found, but if we imagine a giant specimen of an endogenous species, DNS sampling would not reveal anything of interest.
There is no giant monster.
True. It's not that big. Barely the size of an elephant.
Hahaha, +1 funny! I came here to post something similar and it is the first thing I thought about when reading the title ;-)
I might have posted about the Creim Ness monster or something but you obviously beat me to it FCLM!
-Cheers,