Loch Ness Elephant?
Wednesday March 15, 2006
The mysterious sea creature long rumored to have inhabited Scotland's Loch Ness may not be so mysterious after all. Paleontologist Neil Clark has suggested that the silhouette of the Loch Ness monster, with its long slender neck and characteristic humps, could in fact be the silhouette of a swimming elephant.
Rumors of the Loch Ness monster's existence flourished in the 1930s, when a now famous photo showed a half-submerged creature with a long thin neck swimming in the loch. Interestingly, during the 1930s, there were traveling circuses that frequently passed Loch Ness on their way to Inverness.
Clark suggests that a circus caravan could have stopped to allow its elephants a rest and have a swim. Unsuspecting onlookers could have mistaken the submerged pachyderm for a beast of a far stranger kind.
Find out more:
- Loch Ness Monster Was an Elephant? (National Geographic)
- Loch Ness Monster 'Nessie' (Skeptics Dictionary)
- The Loch Ness Monster (Smithsonian Institution)
Image © Christian Darkin
Comments
Eh, no. The photo alluded to is a well-known hoax. Also, the first recorded sighting was way back in 6th century when St. Columba is reputed to have encountered one on the shores of the Loch. So, if it was an elephant it must be a pretty old one. Moreover, if it’s a swimming elephant how come it was never been found traipsing around on shore. Indeed if circus owners let their elephants have a dook in the loch, how come there weren’t other sightings in other lochs? What makes Clark think a circus was travelling through on the day of the 1930s sighting anyway. Can he prove that both events occurred on the same day. I don’t think so.
Seems to me that Clark’s opinion have something of Texas Sharpshooting about them, if you ask me. His argument is less plausible than Nessie being an undiscovered Plesiosaur, since at least some prehistoric animals long thought to be extinct have turned up alive and well in some places in the world, the most notable of which is the Coelecanth.
Anyway, how come the writer doesn’t ask these questions herself? Does she report all hearsay and conjecture as absolute fact without ever interrogating it.
Scotbot -
Thank you for your thoughts.
I would like to point out a few things regarding your last statement.
This entry does not state that stories of the Loch Ness creature are fact. It simply describes various rumors and proposed explanations.
Also, I do not suggest that the Loch Nes photo is fact and I have long believed it to be a hoax. But that is not relevant. I said it was a famous photo, and that it is.
Finally, the articles the entry links to question the existence of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’. They do not argue the factual existence of the Loch Ness.