Is Nessie the real deal? Not for me
IT would appear that the ‘neck’ that launched a thousand tacky tourist gifts has made an appearance again above the surface of Loch Ness’s murky and peat darkened waters.
Yes, the so-called ‘Nessie’, a kind of dinosaur-age throw back and Jurassic Park plesiosaur, was reputedly posing recently for tourist Steve Challice.
Sorry folks, and sorry to spoil your fun, but there is no such thing.
Trust me this has hoax written all over it, not least because the Monster is the Holy Grail for Cryptozoologists.
These are the guys, and it is usually males of the species, who attempt to prove the existence of legendary animals like the American Sasquatch or Bigfoot and they travel the world trading grainy photographs of assorted beasties, sometimes at great expense.
To a certain extent I am with them and really, really want the Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine to be alive.
Forget Nessie, Bigfoot and the Yeti, the thylacine has always been my favourite, ever since I attended the International Cryptozoology Conference in Edinburgh way back in 1988. The photograph I saw from 1930 is reputed to be the last wild thylacine shot by Yorkshireman, Wilf Batty, after he caught it killing his chickens.
At the conference there was a chap from Germany who was convinced that the creature last recorded live in Hobart Zoo in 1936 was still alive and he had spent a fortune camped out over a number of years trying to get an evidential photograph in the Tasmanian outback.
Having said that, he also believed that mermaids were real.
Yes, he was absolutely bonkers, as were half the delegates, but there’s nothing wrong with a passion and he was very sincere and enthusiastic.
Like any good family gathering there were heated exchanges, especially concerning the existence of Mokele Mbembe, a sauropod dinosaur, in the Congo River Basin.
Some say it is a huge beast, as big as an elephant or even a water-rhino, and though a herbivore it will violently attack any man or animal that comes near.
It is semi-aquatic and dwells in Lake Tele and the largely unexplored swamps that surround the lake.
Another argument at the conference began when, holding fort in the foyer, an American millionaire announced he was setting up an expedition to find the creature, but he claimed it was only nine inches long and was most likely to be found under damp rocks like frogs and toads.
Seriously, they nearly came to blows over a non-existent dinosaur.
Africa has long been a hot-bed for cryptids and as far back as 2,000 years ago there were reports of a catoblepas, an evil incarnation, half pangolin, half buffalo, that killed instantly with its eyes or bad breath.
British climber Eric Shipton set the rumour mill in worldwide motion with his yeti footprint.
The photograph was taken on the Menlung Glacier, west of Mount Everest, on the Nepal-Tibet border. Shipton and Michael Ward were searching for an alternative Everest route when they came across the prints.
Cards on the table here, as I don’t believe in most of the improbable beasts, the branch of the ‘pseusdoscience’ that I am really interested in is the continued existence of actual known species, like the thylacine and one of the world’s largest woodpeckers, the ivorybill, one of six North American bird species thought to be extinct for many years.
The last conclusive sighting of the woodpecker was in Louisiana in 1944.
While the bird has not been photographed since the 1930s, a new study conducted by a researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory posits that - despite the lack of definitive evidence of the species’ existence - the so-called ‘Lord God bird’ is not extinct and its habitat