The mystery of the monster

Whose idea was it to put the power of science towards uncovering the truth of Nessie once and for all? Professor Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago, with the help of scientists from Copenhagen, Hull, the Highlands and Islands. Gemmell said of the endeavour: “While the prospect of looking for evidence of the Loch Ness Monster is the hook to this project, there is an extraordinary amount of new knowledge that we will gain from the work about organisms that inhabit Loch Ness.”

Lurking in the loch

Loch Ness sign via Getty Images

Though the idea that a monster is hiding in Loch Ness is centuries older than the printing press, the first time major attention was drawn to the myth was in 1933, when an article in The Inverness Courier was published on the subject. The article was written by Alex Campbell, a part-time journalist and the bailiff in charge of watching over Loch Ness.

Spotting the beast

Dave Conner via Flickr

The Inverness Courier article discussed Aldie Mackay’s Nessie sighting, which came as she was driving with her husband past the loch. Mackay described the creature as having the body of a whale and rolling in the water so ferociously that the ocean began to churn like a “simmering cauldron”.

Whale-like creature

The Loch ness monster in the water looks at the beautiful birds flying against the sunset.

Mackay’s experience was so overwhelming that after she saw the creature, she reportedly could not help but yell out to her husband: “Stop! The beast!” It’s quite the story, although decades later it became clear that Mackay knew of the myth she was feeding into, saying in an interview in the late 1980s that she was aware of an oral tradition about a beast in the loch.

Creating huge waves

The piece in The Inverness Courier attracted a lot of attention and even encouraged other people to come forward with their own Nessie stories. D. Mackenzie, hailing from the Scottish village of Balnain, allegedly saw Nessie way back in 1871, but didn’t share his experience until 1934, following the publication of the Courier’s first Nessie piece.

Crossing the road

In an account sent to Rupert Gould following the increased interest in the monster, Mackenzie described an object resembling an upturned boat or log, which was seen “wriggling and churning up the water”. His account described Nessie as having surprising speed, moving slowly and then faster before finally totally disappearing.

Like a dragon

Though other Nessie encounters date back further, the sighting most responsible for igniting the public imagination was George Spicer’s. Spicer was the first to describe the creature in terrifying but understandable terms, saying it had a long neck, high back and webbed feet, characteristics we still attribute to Nessie today.

Proof on film?

Spicer described Nessie as four feet tall and 25 feet long, and said that he saw her carrying another animal in her mouth. According to him, Nessie had a neck just slightly thicker than an elephant’s trunk and left a trail of broken undergrowth in her wake. He finished his description by saying she was: “the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal that I have ever seen in my life,” and this evocative description transformed Nessie into a national fascination overnight.

The surgeon snaps a photo

1933 was a big year for Nessie, as evidenced by the fact that it produced not only the first journalism discussing the creature, but also the first photograph. Hugh Gray had the honour of snapping the first picture of Nessie, which has since been theorised to be a swan, an otter, or even Gray’s own labrador retrieving a stick from the water.

Emerging from the water

Just a year after Gray’s photograph, the first picture of Nessie’s head and neck was taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynaecologist. Interestingly, Wilson refused to have his name publicly associated with the image, which was inarguably the most famous Nessie picture in the world for over 60 years.

A crafty hoax

Thanks to Wilson’s reticence, the iconic image became known as the “surgeon’s photograph”, and showed a long-necked creature emerging from the centre of the loch. However, Wilson’s shyness did not protect him from the revelation that the image was a hoax, achieved by zooming in on a photograph of an object only two to three feet long, which was probably towed.

The monster’s species

Even the discovery that the most famous image of the Loch Ness Monster was a fake did not stop both the general public and scientists from theorising about exactly what kind of creature Nessie is. After spending years exploring the stories of other river-bound cryptids, in the finale of season five of River Monsters, Jeremy Wade took on the biggest monster of them all: Nessie.

Could it be a catfish?

Jeremy Wade quickly put to bed the long-standing theory that Nessie is a plesiosaur, on the grounds that plesiosaurs were marine reptiles and so, even assuming one could survive for so long isolated from the rest of its species, it would need to frequently break the surface of the water often to breathe oxygen. That would presumably result in far more frequent sightings than are recorded each year.

Maybe a dinosaur

Another popular theory is that the Loch Ness Monster is a white sturgeon, given that the white sturgeon is one fish that can reach mammoth sizes consistent with descriptions of Nessie. However, this theory has been widely discredited on the grounds that Nessie is often characterized as a “man-hunter”, and white sturgeon have never been recorded behaving aggressively towards humans.

Intriguing explanation

The last animal often touted as the one mistaken for Nessie is the Greenland shark, which has a dorsal fin that is more flattened and rounded than your average shark fin. This fin makes it look similar to an upturned boat from land, which is a description often during sightings of the Loch Ness Monster.

The ripple theory

However, animals are not the only explanations given for Nessie. In a 1982 series for New Scientist, science author and zoologist Maurice Burton theorised that Scots Pine logs laying under the surface of the loch were decomposing, and so releasing gas that made them float to the surface. This movement was then mistaken by monster-spotters for the movement of Nessie limbs!

No single explanation

The last piece of evidence people often cite when it comes to the Loch Ness Monster is the fact that ripples are constantly appearing on the loch’s surface, despite seemingly not originating from anywhere in particular. This unsettling phenomenon is actually a quirk of nature; as a long, straight body of water, ripples caused by far away earthquakes or the water returning to its natural level after being blown to one end can appear totally spontaneous.

Revealing the truth

So if Nessie is not a shark, a dinosaur that survived a mass-extinction event or even the source of the mysterious ripples that can sometimes be seen on Loch Ness’ surface, then what is she? Well, that’s what Professor Neil Gemmell and his team set out to find out in 2018, by DNA testing samples from the loch.

Gaining new knowledge

Before the start of the study, Gemmell said that his aim was to search for evidence of “unusual species” in the freshwater loch. However, he was more looking for evidence of catfish or giant eels that could easily be mistaken for Nessie than for evidence of dragons or dinosaurs, or any animals that we did not know had managed to migrate to Loch Ness.

DNA sticks around

The premise of the study was simple. Anything swimming through Loch Ness would deposit its DNA onto the rocks and stones at the bottom of the loch, or just into the water itself, by shedding tiny pieces of skin or scales. Any water sample would therefore reveal what is lurking in the depths, whether that be a monster or just a large concentration of salmon.

Finding brand-new species

Gemmell’s interest was in what new species could be found in the loch, from clusters of unique bacteria that colonised the waters at Loch Ness but never had the ability to travel anywhere else, to evidence of invasive species that had made their way to Loch Ness unknown. The former probably wouldn’t explain Nessie given that bacteria are far too small to be seen by the naked eye, but the latter potentially could!

The team’s results

Neil Gemmell began his study in 2018 and by 2019, his preliminary results were already ready to share with the world. The research project he conducted involved spending two weeks at Loch Ness, during which time his team gathered daily water samples, before retreating back to the lab for the next phase of the study. Then they analysed the samples for signs of life, and found….

Looking at the evidence

Loch Ness is full of life! There was plenty of DNA evidence showing signs that humans, deer, pigs and sticklebacks had all spent time in the loch. However, what they didn’t find was any DNA evidence of seals, catfish, sharks or elephants, all major candidates in the “what animal is Nessie, really?” sweepstakes. So much for that theory!

Process of elimination

So then what conclusion did Gemmell come to about the animal accidentally masquerading as a monster? Eels. Specifically, giant eels. There was plenty of DNA evidence in Loch Ness to imply that eels live in the loch in large numbers, and their long, limbless bodies definitely fit Nessie’s various descriptions across history.

Could it be an eel?

The giant eel theory seems like a slam dunk at first… but the cracks begin to show the more you think about it. For example, while a giant eel is definitely not a small animal, the heaviest giant eel ever caught in Europe is only 12 pounds. Not only that, but the maximum length for an eel in the UK is thought to be seven feet, significantly shorter than estimates of Nessie’s length, which sit at 25 feet.

Too small for the monster

Gemmell did explain the limits of his eel theory during a 2019 press conference at the Loch Ness Centre, saying: “It is possible there are very large eels, but it depends how big you think β€˜large’ is” and also pointing out that no giant eel has ever been caught in Loch Ness. Of course, that doesn’t mean that one never will be!

Lots of DNA

The only other wrinkle in the giant eel theory is that while there is a high concentration of eel DNA in Loch Ness, that is more an indication of a large population of eels, rather than a clue that a few giant eels are swimming around in the depths. Gemmell joked about this in his speech, saying: β€œWe don’t know if the eel DNA we are detecting is from a gigantic eel or just many small eels.”

Growing to a monstrous size

Of course, the giant eel hypothesis being the more unlikely one doesn’t mean that it’s wholly impossible. There are examples of eels growing much larger than the mean or median average length of their species, and this usually happens when eels are unable or unwilling to migrate. When the eels can’t or don’t decide to travel, all that energy that would have gone into movement and reproduction is instead channelled into growth, leading to truly mammoth sizes.

Not a dinosaur

Neil Gemmell didn’t limit his Loch Ness Monster exploration to just examining the giant eel theory. He also took on some of the more outlandish explanations for Nessie, including the idea that a dinosaur somehow survived the ice-age deep in the waters of Loch Ness, saying: β€œIs there a plesiosaur in Loch Ness? No. There is absolutely no evidence of any reptilian sequences. So I think we can be fairly sure that there is probably not a giant scaly reptile swimming around in Loch Ness.”

A major flaw

No study is perfect, and a scientific endeavour conducted by just a handful of researchers who spent only two weeks at Loch Ness gathering samples is bound to have flaws and limitations. Gemmell even admitted that his findings were inconclusive and that he could easily have missed something, as evidenced by the fact that his team failed to find seal or otter DNA in the water, despite knowing that both animals could be found there regularly.

Can’t rule a monster out

At the end of the day, the problem with trying to disprove Nessie’s existence by cataloguing every species present in Loch Ness is that when it comes to science, it’s considered pretty difficult to prove a negative. Meaning that a study that aims to definitively prove the existence of Nessie will always be more convincing than a study attempting to disprove her.

Capturing imaginations

Ultimately, while Neil Gemmell achieved his goal of expanding the world’s understanding of the zoological and environmental make-up of Loch Ness’ ecosystem, he didn’t manage to prove the existence of Nessie either way. However, maybe that’s okay, as the function of myths and legends is to make people feel connected to and in awe of a specific place. As Gemmell put it: β€œThere’s still some level of uncertainty there, so there is still the opportunity for people to believe in monsters. Is it front-page news? I don’t know. But we’ve captured some imaginations.”

The man who β€œfound” the monster

Gemmell may have tried to prove the existence of Nessie through science, but George Edwards took a different approach. Edwards worked as a tourist guide for decades, ferrying people across Loch Ness every day and regaling them with tales of the beast. His life changed when one day he managed to grab his camera and snap a picture in time, a picture that would re-ignite the world’s interest in Nessie.

A magical place

Edwards’ photograph showed an unmistakable humped creature just disappearing beneath the surface of the water, but the flurry of excitement around the picture didn’t last long. People immediately began to call attention to the similarity of the shape in the photo to a fibreglass Nessie hump created for a documentary…. a documentary that George Edwards happened to appear in.

Unmatched confidence

Once word spread that George Edwards had probably acquired the fake hump from the documentary in order to bolster tourism to the area and secure his own livelihood, Edwards came clean. However, even while admitting to the deception, the longstanding Nessie-hunting skipper didn’t apologise, saying: “It’s keeping things like this going for the last 80 years that has brought hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, up here. It’s what Loch Ness is about. The monster is Loch Ness.” That’s certainly one way to look at it!

The first sighting

George Edwards’ attempt to fake evidence of the Loch Ness Monster drew ire from both believers and sceptics, but he was far from the first person to create a Nessie forgery. In 1977, a picture was taken by psychic and magician Anthony “Doc” Shiels, featuring a fake Nessie so bad that it has since been nicknamed the Loch Ness Muppet by enthusiasts.

Continued intrigue

Shiels even created a hugely elaborate story to go along with his picture, saying that he had used his magical powers to command the creature to raise up out of the water and obey him. He described the Loch Ness Monster as a kind of “elephant squid”, with a long trunk and single eye. The lack of ripples visible in the photograph is what gave it away as a fake, along with the truly bizarre look he chose for Nessie.

Nessie resemblance

As for more modern examples of the enduring hobby of taking pictures of Nessie, 55-year-old laboratory technician Gordon Holmes also had a go in 2007. Rather than deliberately faking an image for attention, Holmes quickly nabbed a video of something “14 metres (46 ft) long, moving fairly fast through the water”. Though a definitive explanation for the video has yet to be seen, many marine biologists have speculated that the video depicts an otter, seal or water bird. Better luck next time!

A sturgeon?

So the question is: has any video or picture of Nessie actually increased people’s belief in the creature, rather than diminished it? Well, kind of! The Dinsdale film was shot in 1960 by Aeronautical engineer Tim Dinsdale, who spent a holiday searching for the creature at Loch Ness. Dinsdale reportedly saw the monster on the last day of his search – how lucky is that?

Multiple motivations

On his final day at the loch, he saw a shape moving under the water with a reddish blotch on its side. He shot 40 feet of film, but the reception to his footage was lukewarm, with many saying that although the shape was “probably animate”, it could just as easily be a boat. Not only that, but when the footage was enhanced, some said they could even see a man in the alleged vehicle. Not a great start.

Longstanding evidence

However, the reception towards the Dinsdale film and its place in Loch Ness Monster history changed in 1993. That year, a documentary called Loch Ness Discovered was released which included a segment in which the video was enhanced, and overlayed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it frames. This tinkering revealed a shadow that was brand new to the public and the reputation of the film as an obvious hoax vanished in an instant.

Prehistoric ancestors

Not only that, but the shadow seemed to depict the body of an animal consistent with descriptions of Nessie! One of the editors working on the documentary later said: “Before I saw the film, I thought the Loch Ness Monster was a load of rubbish. Having done the enhancement, I’m not so sure.” How’s that for proof?

A mysterious figure

Nowadays, the Loch Ness Monster is considered more of a cutesy tourist attraction than an actual threat to human life, but that doesn’t mean that enthusiasm around the search has died down. In 2015, Google even commemorated the 81st anniversary of the “surgeon’s photograph” with a hilarious jape, designed to trick people into thinking that maybe Nessie had been definitively spotted after all!

Snapping a picture

Google’s Street View team of technicians spent a week photographing Loch Ness from the banks, above and even from below the water, in order to allow enthusiasts not located in and around Scotland to conduct their own virtual search for Nessie. They even added a Nessie-themed Google doodle to the search engine’s first page, in order to properly honour the creature on her big day!

The best photograph?

Google likes to celebrate big historical events and anniversaries with special illustrations and gimmicks, but their idea to run a Google Street View event about the Loch Ness Monster might have been inspired by something other than just a love of Nessie. In 2014, just a year before Google’s own event, Apple experienced their own Nessie-related internet event… only it wasn’t planned!

Worth a thousand words

On the 19th of April 2014, sources began to report that Apple Maps was showing an image of a large creature, visible just below the surface of Loch Ness. It didn’t take long for people to spread the joyous news that Apple had accidentally captured footage of Scotland’s most beloved cryptid. Even crazier, the image appeared to show a creature 98 feet in length, longer even than most Nessie estimates!

Expert opinions

Of course, after the initial fervour died down, people began to speculate as to what the Apple Maps satellite was actually showing. The prevalent theory became that the shape was not under the water at all, but instead on its surface, and was actually a long wake being caused by a boat. Why wasn’t the boat visible? Well, Apple’s image stitching software has been known to glitch out, and could have swallowed the image of the boat whole.

Bubble trouble

Other theories said that perhaps the boat was just a similar colour to the water, and so had been lost in the low-contrast satellite image. Those that didn’t buy into the boat theory said it was equally likely that Apple Maps had snapped a picture of ripples caused by a passing seal that had just ducked back under the water, or that the shadow was just a large piece of floating wood. Not quite as glamorous or mysterious as Nessie!

If a tree falls…

Putting all questions about Nessie’s zoological classification aside, the question is this: if Nessie really isn’t a literal creature swimming around the waters of Loch Ness, then how did people get the idea? Plenty of cryptids have been bourne out of stories over time, but why did the idea of a long-necked, dinosaur-like reptilian fish capture the imaginations of both Scotland and the world?

The truth comes out

The answer to the question of why Nessie is the way she is goes further back than you might think! Scottish folklore has always included tales of dangerous monsters hiding in lochs, apparently first created in order to keep vulnerable children away from the treacherous edge. Of course, nowadays the Nessie legend has the opposite effect, as children are far more likely to dash towards the water in hopes of glancing the creature.

Bit of fun

The Loch Ness Monster is probably the latest evolution of kelpies: shapeshifting fey spirits that haunt bodies of water and devour children by dragging them into the depths. Though kelpies can appear human, they are most often depicted as horses, to the extent that in some stories they even keep their hooves when attempting to pass as people. Kelpies are also known as “water horses”, which may explain Nessie’s trademark humps, which seem as though they could ferry passengers from one end of the loch to the other.

Not a shred of guilt

The most promising piece of evidence suggesting that the Loch Ness Monster is simply a super famous kelpie is that, despite the fact that many lochs have their own specific legends about spooky fey creatures that you should be wary of, no loch is so associated with faerie activity as Loch Ness. Maybe that is why the water horse legend has stuck around for that loch in particular, eventually becoming the birthplace of the story we now know as Nessie’s!

People keep searching

And that concludes our whistlestop tour of the history, hoxes and faces of the Loch Ness Monster! Please exit to your left, and don’t forget to pick up an adorable Nessie plushie, keyring, tartan mug or box of shortbread on your way out. Who knows, maybe another sighting will occur tomorrow and we’ll see you again soon!