Scientists who analyzed the notorious Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands determined that there was no biological evidence to support the existence of the famed monster that has been the subject of hoaxes and speculation for decades.
There was, however, lots of evidence to support the presence of eels.
“Eels are very plentiful in the loch system,” said professor Neil Gemmell of New Zealand’s University of Otago. “Every single sampling site that we went to pretty much had eels, and the sheer volume of it was a bit of a surprise.”
The photo of a giant creature in Loch Ness surfaced in 1934 and had people across the globe guessing about the origin and species of the creature. The photo was later widely dismissed as a hoax, but rumors about the beast, called “Nessie” by the press, persist even today. Unconfirmed sightings of Nessie have occurred widely for nearly 100 years.
The scientific study was conducted by an international team of scientists who analyzed the giant Scottish lake for evidence of any creature that may have lived in it at any time. They were unable to confirm the existence of any type of prehistoric creature but did confirm an unusually large amount of evidence that eels have populated the lake for a very long time.
Whether or not Nessie was just a giant eel spotted over 80 years ago or perhaps something else is still a matter of debate.
“We can’t exclude the possibility that there’s a giant eel in Loch Ness, but we don’t know whether these samples we’ve collected are from a giant beast or just an ordinary one — so there’s still this element of ‘we just don’t know,'” Gemmell said.
