On this month's Oddities in the News Page:
DNA evidence has discovered what's really in Loch Ness
IN THE ODDITIES ARCHIVES
Shark Tooth DNA
Military Admits to UFOs
Wild Animal Pets
Flinstone House
Fluffy the Cat
Artificial Intelligence Newscaster
ABOVE: EELS MEASURED IN FEET. The Loch Ness monster may be a 13 foot eel.
Scientist: DNA Samples Suggest Famed 'Loch Ness Monster' Might Be a Giant Eel
NEW YORK (AP), September 7, 2019 — A scientist who collected DNA from Scotland’s Loch Ness suggests the lake’s fabled monster might be a giant eel.
Neil Gemmell from the University of Otago in New Zealand says the project found a surprisingly high amount of eel DNA in the water. He cautioned that it’s not clear whether that indicates a gigantic eel or just a lot of little ones.
But he said at a news conference in Scotland on Thursday that the idea of a giant eel is at least plausible.
The DNA project found no evidence to support the notion that the monster is a long-necked ancient reptile called a plesiosaur (PLEE’-see-uh-sawr).
Loch Ness is the largest and second deepest body of fresh water in the British Isles.
They found no evidence that the lake harbors a prehistoric reptile, and no DNA from sharks, catfish or sturgeons, some of the other animals put forth to explain the myth.
There was a lot of genetic material from eels, however.
“The remaining theory that we cannot refute based on the environmental DNA data obtained is that what people are seeing is a very large eel,” the team wrote on its website explaining the findings.
It’s still unclear, the scientists said, whether the loch contains an eel big enough to account for descriptions of a monster. Some researchers have raised the eel theory before, and people have reported seeing large eels in Loch Ness. A video shot in 2007 captures a four-meter marine animal on the loch’s surface that could have been an eel, Gemmell’s team says, although they acknowledge that such a large specimen would be unusual.
Not everyone is impressed with their findings. Steve Feltham, who holds the Guinness Book of Records’ distinction for longest continuous Loch Ness monster hunt, told the BBC that the idea of eels living in the loch was no revelation. Other animals have yet to be ruled out, he added.
“A 12-year-old boy could tell you there are eels in Loch Ness,” Feltham said. “I caught eels in the loch when I was a 12-year-old boy.”
See the entire article HERE
See more from The Horror Zine about Loch Ness HERE
A VERY OLD STORY
The first written story of the Loch Ness monster is in a text written in the year 565 AD by a Celtic biographer: this writer describes how a man was attacked by a monster while he was swimming in the river Ness. Perhaps the legend already existed in those days: it has certainly existed for many centuries in Scottish folklore.
However, the story of the monster was not very well-known in England for one simple reason: Loch Ness is a very long way from the rest of Britain. Until the age of the railway, very few people ever went to the Highlands of Scotland....except soldiers or officials from the cities of the Scottish Lowlands. No-one else had any reason to go there: the North of Scotland was wild anddesolate, wet and generally cold, and inhabited more by sheep than by people.
The myth became big news in 1930; three men, out in a boat on the lake, said that they had seen a monster. Immediately, several other people said that they had seen one too. In 1933, a man took the first "photo" of the monster, from a distance of about 100 metres. The photo was not clear, but Kodak said that the photo was real.
The most famous photo of all was taken in 1934 by a London surgeon; it seems to show a long neck and a small head sticking up out of the water. "Nessie" - if the photo is real - looks something like a dinosaur.
Or it could be someone's arm and hand.
See more HERE