A quiz question between friends on a rainy winter’s night by a fire: who is the most famous Scotsman of all time? Homeland heroes William Wallace and Robert the Bruce? Inventors such as Alexander Bell (telephone), Alexander Fleming (penicillin) or James Watt (steam engine)? Mary Stuart, beheaded by her cousin Elizabeth? The poet Robert Burns? The writers Walter Scott (Treasure Island) and Conan Doyle (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)? The designer Charles Rennie MacKintosh? Tennis player Andy Murray? The actor Sean Connery? According to Adam Suimpson, columnist for the Scottish Herald, the answer is none of them, but the Loch Ness monster.
Nessie, as she is affectionately known, is undoubtedly the biggest contributor of all the aforementioned people (many long dead) to Scotland’s ailing economy: it is estimated that around fifty million euros a year year, thanks to the tourists from all over the world that the country attracts. Perhaps that is why, if one is of a slightly skeptical nature (as is the case), the launch now of the largest-scale search for the “monster” in fifty years, with last-generation technologies, drones with infrared cameras and a hydrophone to detect sounds in the deeper waters of the mysterious lake.
The operation is a joint project of the Loch Ness Visitor Center in Drumnadrochit and a private research group called Loch Ness Exploration, who have brought together scientists from around the world and put out an appeal for of volunteers who will travel the waters of the lake in a bathyscaphe (a much less risky adventure than the search for the Titanic) or, even less dangerous, will observe with binoculars, from strategically placed promontories, any possible appearance of Nessie. The supposed monster probably won’t make an appearance, but more tourists will come and leave more money (lack of money is one of the main obstacles to Scottish independence). “We want to inspire a new generation of enthusiasts and give them the opportunity to participate personally in solving a mystery that fascinates people on five continents,” says the pamphlet.
The first references to a species of prehistoric animal in the area date back to the sixth century, when the Irish monk Saint Columba explained that he had found a “great creature” in the River Ness, which flows into the lake of the same name. Already in the modern era, in 1933, 90 years ago, Aldie Mackay, manager of a hotel in the Highlands, assured that he had seen “a kind of whale jumping, a black and wet thing, with a loin of water came out”. In the newspaper The Inverness Courier, a certain Evan Barron saw an opportunity in the story and its director at the time was the first to refer to a “monster”.
Since then, more than a thousand witnesses claim to have seen him. But is it the fruit of fevered imaginations or does it have some basis in reality? Scientists are divided, but the most popular theory is that of a giant eel, although one has never been caught, and the ones that inhabit European lakes are small. However, DNA samples (no trace of prehistoric large animals or reptiles) suggest it is the most dominant species in the loch, and Professor Neil Gemmell of the University of Otago (New Zealand) believes it is possible that some fiercely hungry specimen endowed with exceptional genes has grown enormously, as some carp do.
In any case, Nessie has a potential rival, who has not yet been named, in London, since a couple of weeks ago an individual who is dedicated to looking for “treasures” among the mud on the banks of the River Thames, in London, assured on social networks that he had found “a giant creature the size of an anaconda”, with photos of a creature that appears to be a large snake with a red eye. Some have joked and suggested it’s a rock with a beer cap on it, others that it’s a wooden stick with an object embedded in it that floated to the surface at low tide… All and that the favorite theory is that it is a boa constrictor (a species native to the South American jungle), common as a domestic animal, that would have escaped.
Competition for Nessie. And a reason for the English to claim that their monsters are at least as important and mysterious as the Scots…
