BBC Has Bad News For Nessie Fans

[Garrison Hilliard <garrison@efn.org>]

BBC Has Bad News For Nessie Fans

by Charlotte LoBuono

Posted on August 4, 2003 
Scotland's most famous tourist attraction really is fiction, not fact, according
to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) investigators who recently reported
that they were unable to find the Loch Ness monster, known as "Nessie" to her
friends. 

The researchers used satellite navigation technology and 600 separate sonar
beams to thoroughly search the waters of Loch Ness, in Scotland, where Nessie
reportedly lurks. 

The BBC team hoped that their equipment would detect the air in the monster's
lungs as it reflected a distorted signal back to the sonar sensors. All that
they managed to detect, unfortunately, was a buoy moored several meters below
the water's surface as a test for the equipment. 

 
Loch Ness monster is a myth, BBC concludes  


The researchers feel the only reason that belief in the Loch Ness monster has
persisted is that people see what they want to see. To prove this, they hid a
fence post beneath the loch's surface, and then raised it in view of a busload
of tourists. 

When interviewed afterward, most of the tourists said that they had seen a
square object. When asked to sketch what they saw, however, several people drew
monster-shaped heads. 

It has been speculated that the creature is a descendant of a plesiosaur, a
marine reptile that died out with the dinosaurs. Nessie is often described as a
creature resembling a plesiosaur, although experts claim that the most recent
plesiosaur fossil dates from 65 million years ago, and Loch Ness is only 10,000
years old. 

  
Sightings of a "monster" in Loch Ness have been reported since the time of St.
Columbia in the 6th century. 

The investigators studied the habits of modern marine reptiles, including
leatherback turtles and crocodiles, to determine how a plesiosaur may have
behaved. 

They believed that although marine reptiles prefer subtropical waters, a
plesiosaur could have survived in the cold waters of Loch Ness. 


Sources
AJC.Com
www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0703/30nessie.html
Loch Ness monster is a myth, BBC concludes 

BBC
news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3096839.stm
BBC proves "Nessie" does not exist 


© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.