The Loch Ness monster is one of the greatest legends/myths in the world – there are a couple of photographs and about a thousand accounts of people running into it, but no clear explanation of just what the hell was going on with it.
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This is all set to change though thanks to a new study from a bunch of New Zealand scientists that claims to have finally solved the mystery of Ol’ Nessie. Here’s what Professor Neil Gemmell, a geneticist from New Zealand’s University of Otago, told BBC News, after scraping the lake to find what all the different kinds of DNA that were present in it:
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We can’t find any evidence of a creature that’s remotely related to a dinosaur in our environmental-DNA sequence data. So, sorry, I don’t think the plesiosaur (an order of extinct marine reptiles) idea holds up based on the data that we have obtained.
So there’s no shark DNA in Loch Ness based on our sampling.
There is also no catfish DNA in Loch Ness based on our sampling. We can’t find any evidence of sturgeon either.
There is a very significant amount of eel DNA. Eels are very plentiful in Loch Ness, with eel DNA found at pretty much every location sampled – there are a lot of them. So – are they giant eels?
Well, our data doesn’t reveal their size, but the sheer quantity of the material says that we can’t discount the possibility that there may be giant eels in Loch Ness. Therefore we can’t discount the possibility that what people see and believe is the Loch Ness Monster might be a giant eel.
A giant eel – it seems so obvious! Can’t believe that people have been debating for literally thousands of years and these guys literally did a massive scientific investigation into what it could be and the answer was that simple. Well, at least we know now – pretty sure that nobody will question that conclusion and we can all put the issue to bed now. Sounds completely legit. RIP Nessie.
For more of the same, check out people planning to storm Loch Ness the day after the Area 51 raid. Should work out well.
