Loch Ness monster: folk legend or scientific wonder?

Loch Ness monster: folk legend or scientific wonder? - This Scottish lake is the perfect setting for a mysterious legend about a monster that lives deep in the lake and looks like a dinosaur.

The existence of the Loch Ness monster has never been proven scientifically but this legend is part of Scottish culture and popular imagination. Many people visit the lake hoping to see the mysterious creature that inspired movies, TV shows, and video games.

Check out the gallery and unveil the Loch Ness mystery!

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Location - Loch Ness is a freshwater lake in the Scottish Highlands.

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Shape - The lake has a narrow shape and is about 37 km long.

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Area - The lake has an area of approximately 56.4 km² and a maximum depth of 226 meters.

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Volume - This is the largest freshwater lake in Britain, and the third-largest in Europe.

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Rocks - The rocks around the lake are made of granite, and as they are very resistant to erosion, there is no possibility of underwater cave formation.

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Legend - The legend of the Loch Ness monster became popular in the late 1970s.

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Aleister Crowley - There are several versions of the legend. One of them claims that a house by the lake belonged to the famous occultist Aleister Crowley, known as the father of modern Satanism.

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The occultist - Some people claim that the occultist killed many people in his rituals and many of them were thrown into the lake.

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Employees - Years later, the occultist's house was purchased by a member of Led Zeppelin, and some of the musician's employees died mysteriously. Legend has it that some disappeared when they went swimming in the lake.

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Sightings - In the late 1970s, some people claimed to have seen a strange creature in the lake, who looked like a monster and a dinosaur.

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Energy creature - Up until the late 1980s many people claimed to have seen the monster, but its existence has never been proven. Some mystics believed that the monster was a mixture of negative energies that only the most sensitive people could see.

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The legend dates back to the Middle Ages - The legend dates back to 565 AD. According to the legend, an Irish missionary, St Columba, saved a pupil from being attacked by a monster in the lake. Since then, more than 10,000 sightings have been recorded.

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In the media - In 1933, a reporter for the Inverness Courier wrote a story based on the monster's last sighting, which sparked media interest and motivated people to tell their sighting stories.

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Farce - Several people told their stories, but many of them later revealed that the stories were fake.

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Discarded - Scientists then discarded any possibility of the monster's existence.

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First photo - However, in 1934, an English physician called R. K. Wilson photographed the creature swimming on the surface of the lake.

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Not a fake - Tests were carried out on the film negatives and it was proved that the photo was legitimate.

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Best picture - The photo taken by the English doctor is one of the best images of the monster to this day.

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NASA investigation - NASA also participated in research conducted on the monster, but it was the Academy of Applied Science in Boston that invested more in research on the mysterious creature.

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Computerized image - The technicians claimed to have captured a computerized image of a body that could be the monster.

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Scientific skepticism - However, the reports were not accurate and most of the scientists remained skeptical about the monster's existence.

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Plesiosaur - Most reports of the monster's sightings describe it as a Plesiosaurs, a large aquatic reptile with a large neck, in comparison to its head. This animal would be a distant relative of a dinosaur that have been extinct since the Mesozoic period.

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Dinosaur - The resemblance to an animal led some cryptozoologists to claim that the Loch Ness monster was a Plessiosaur which survived the extinction of its species at the end of the Cretaceous period.

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A monster living in unique conditions - Other scientists have put forward the theory that the monster had a different bone structure from its supposed cousin who lived in the Atlantic or Arctic oceans, and its body adapted to different climatic conditions.

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Sturgeons - Other explanations include sturgeons, which are abundant in the lake, and mistaken for the monster.

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Gases that create bubbles - Another theory associated the sightings with gases released by the tectonic fault underneath the lake, which can reach the surface as bubbles.

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BBC investigation - In 2003, a BBC team conducted an investigation. They traversed the lake from end to end with divers and 600 sonars, but found no evidence. The BBC concluded that the monster does not exist, but even so, many people still believe it does.

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Geological peculiarity - The geological peculiarity of the lake makes it very difficult to prove the creature's existence.

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Controversy - While some people acknowledge that there is enough scientific evidence to disprove the existence of the monster, some still believe it is out there, so the legend lives on.

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In our imaginations and on the screen - Real or not, the Loch Ness monster is part of Scottish folklore and our imaginations. The TV, video game, and film industries have portrayed the Loch Ness monster in many ways. An example of this is the movie 'Loch Ness' (1996).

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