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Post by Ceratodromeus on Nov 5, 2016 0:33:07 GMT 5
 Description"In folklore, the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, is an aquatic being which reputedly inhabits Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, and is often described as being large in size, with a long neck and one or more humps protruding from the water. Popular interest and belief in the creature has varied since it was brought to worldwide attention in 1933. Evidence of its existence is anecdotal, with few disputed photographs and sonar readings. The creature commonly appears in Western media where it manifests in a variety of ways. The scientific community regards the Loch Ness Monster as a being from folklore without biological basis, explaining sightings as hoaxes, wishful thinking, and the misidentification of mundane objects. OriginsThe word "monster" was reportedly applied for the first time to the creature on 2 May 1933 by Alex Campbell, water bailiff for Loch Ness and a part-time journalist, in an Inverness Courier report. On 4 August 1933 the Courier published a report by Londoner George Spicer that several weeks earlier, while they were driving around the loch, he and his wife saw "the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal that I have ever seen in my life" trundling across the road toward the loch with "an animal" in its mouth.Letters began appearing in the Courier, often anonymously, claiming land or water sightings by the writer, their family or acquaintances or remembered stories. The accounts reached the media, which described a "monster fish", "sea serpent", or "dragon" and eventually settled on "Loch Ness monster". On 6 December 1933 the first purported photograph of the monster, taken by Hugh Gray, was published in the Daily Express; the Secretary of State for Scotland soon ordered police to prevent any attacks on it. In 1934, interest was further piqued by the "surgeon's photograph". That year, R. T. Gould published an account of the author's investigation and a record of reports predating 1933. Other authors have claimed sightings of the monster dating to the sixth century AD. HistoryThe earliest report of a monster in the vicinity of Loch Ness appears in the Life of St. Columba by Adomnán, written in the seventh century AD (year 565). According to Adomnán, writing about a century after the events described, Irish monk Saint Columba was staying in the land of the Picts with his companions when he encountered local residents burying a man by the River Ness. They explained that the man was swimming in the river when he was attacked by a "water beast" which mauled him and dragged him underwater. Although they tried to rescue him in a boat, he was dead. Columba sent a follower, Luigne moccu Min, to swim across the river. The beast approached him, but Columba made the sign of the cross and said: "Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once." The creature stopped as if it had been "pulled back with ropes" and fled, and Columba's men and the Picts gave thanks for what they perceived as a miracle. Believers in the monster point to this story, set in the River Ness rather than the loch itself, as evidence for the creature's existence as early as the sixth century. Sceptics question the narrative's reliability, noting that water-beast stories were extremely common in medieval hagiographies and Adomnán's tale probably recycles a common motif attached to a local landmark. According to sceptics, Adomnán's story may be independent of the modern Loch Ness Monster legend and became attached to it by believers seeking to bolster their claims. According to R. Binns, this account is the most credible of the early sightings of the monster; all other claims before 1933 are dubious and do not prove a tradition of sightings before that date."  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster
Resources for research purposes |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Jun 7, 2019 3:57:08 GMT 5
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Post by dinosauria101 on Jun 7, 2019 6:54:46 GMT 5
smartphones have basically put the Loch Ness Monster to rest. From what I understand, the article states they didn't kill it, but rather disprove its existence. Is that what you meant by 'put to rest'? |
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Post by Infinity Blade on Jun 7, 2019 8:21:39 GMT 5
smartphones have basically put the Loch Ness Monster to rest. From what I understand, the article states they didn't kill it, but rather disprove its existence. Is that what you meant by 'put to rest'? The sheer amount of people spending an absurd amount of time on their phones using social media instead of catching blurry photographs of the Loch Ness Monster must have angered the creature so much that it literally exploded due to sheer rage! Serious note: what I meant should have been obvious, given the context of the article and my post. |
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Post by Life on Jul 16, 2019 0:54:09 GMT 5
DID NINETEENTH CENTURY MARINE VERTEBRATE FOSSIL DISCOVERIES INFLUENCE SEA SERPENT REPORTS?AbstractHere we test the hypothesis, first suggested by L. Sprague De Camp in 1968, that “After Mesozoic reptiles became well-known, reports of sea serpents, which until then had tended towards the serpentine, began to describe the monster as more and more resembling a Mesozoic marine reptile like a plesiosaur or a mosasaur.” This statement generates a number of testable specific hypotheses, namely: 1) there was a decline in reports where the body was described as serpent or eel-like; 2) there was an increase in reports with necks (a feature of plesiosaurs) or reports that mentioned plesiosaurs; and 3) there was an increase in mosasaur-like reports. Over the last 200 years, there is indeed evidence of a decline in serpentiform sea serpent reports and an increase in the proportion of reports with necks but there is no evidence for an increase in the proportion of mosasaur-like reports. However, witnesses only began to unequivocally compare sea serpents to prehistoric reptiles in the late nineteenth century, some fifty years after the suggestion was first made by naturalists. Link: earthscienceshistory.org/doi/abs/10.17704/1944-6178-38.1.16?journalCode=eshiArticle Citation:C. G. M. PAXTON and D. NAISH (2019) DID NINETEENTH CENTURY MARINE VERTEBRATE FOSSIL DISCOVERIES INFLUENCE SEA SERPENT REPORTS?. Earth Sciences History: 2019, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 16-27. doi.org/10.17704/1944-6178-38.1.16
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all
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Post by all on Oct 1, 2019 18:24:19 GMT 5
As far as new technology making it easier to find Nessie if it actually existed. Fast motor boats would scare already elusive creature even more. As far as smartphones even though you said it sarcastically you are actually right. (except the exploding part of course) Nessie is old news. And people simply don't care anymore. The main reason that scientist don't believe that Loch Ness monster could be real is because Loch Ness is too young in geological terms for plesiosaur to live there. Accepting that. Actually less people are actually trying to capture the Loch ness monster on camera than before. And more people are busy talking about how their day was ( or what ever they do on Facebook) than look for animals that may or may not exist. Increased pollution makes things more difficult for nessie not less ( If it actually exists or existed in human history) So eas far as technology some of it would help to find nessie while the rest would actually make it more difficult.
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Post by creature386 on Oct 1, 2019 19:28:04 GMT 5
Unfortunately, I cannot find the publication (if there is any), so I'll just quote Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_MonsterEvery organism loses scales, skin, bodily fluids etc. which then remain in the environment. By investigating the DNA from environmental samples (called "eDNA", short of "environmental DNA"), scientists can learn what types of organisms live in an environment. In short, the Loch Ness contains no prehistoric beasts, but there is a giant eel which might be what people think is Nessie. This is as close to a settled case as a cryptid can get. |
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Post by all on Oct 1, 2019 20:04:01 GMT 5
I' ll probably sound like an idiot. But how many samples were taken ? And can they really state definitively all of the species living in the lake from just couple of samples? Including ones that don't live there permanently but are there only occasionally? I know that all fields of science exploded in last 10 years. But that much?
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Post by creature386 on Oct 1, 2019 20:07:08 GMT 5
They used 259 water samples. Of course it's always possible to overlook something, but Nessie should not be treated like Russel's teapot.
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all
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Post by all on Oct 1, 2019 20:51:58 GMT 5
You are right Nesse should not be treated like Russel's teapot. Nonetheless while believers often make unrealistic claims. Skeptics don't even consider the possibility that something might be behind those stories. If real nessie would be only an occasional visitor to the Lake Ness. Most of his time he would spend in the sea. Only sometimes appearing in the lakes of Scotland. Now although I'm doubtful that Loch Ness monster exists. I don't discard this as a possibility. Being a skeptic doesn't mean you outright discard the possibility of something. You just don't accept it as a fact until you have an actual proof. Not ridicule it outright.
Scientist don't take Nessie seriously because of the fact that Lake Ness appeared after extinction of dinosaurs. However there in an underground river connecting Lake ness and several other lakes to the ocean. The river is much older than lake ness itself. if some plesiosaurs actually survived the mass extinction they could have simply swim to the lake through those underground rivers at some point in more recent geological time. They could also appear there very sporadically. Making them more difficult to identify in biological samples. And seen more rarely than if an animal lived there. another words more difficult to observe on more regular basis. Now obviously I don't conciser that proof of any kind. But combined with photos and sonar. That does not prove existence of Loch Ness monster to me. But makes me believe that I cannot discard that possibly outright.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 2, 2019 0:40:11 GMT 5
Except fast motorboats have been a thing for a while. Motorboats were invented all the way back in 1886, and by the early 20th century, people were becoming rapidly interested in fast motorboats. Hell, the first motorboating competition was all the way back in 1903, and the first commercially successful one came in 1907. Meanwhile, the first Nessie sighting that generated modern interest was in 1933. Fast motorboats were there since the beginning of the modern Loch Ness Monster craze, yet that didn't stop all these supposed "sightings" back then. coxmarine.com/blog/the-evolution-of-motorboats-2/That's literally always been the case. We've always been busy talking about how our day was, it's just that nowadays we can do so on the Internet to a far wider audience of people than we've ever had before. People didn't care any more about Nessie back then than they do now. That's because at any given time most people are not cryptozoologists who are actively searching out a cryptid creature. But even if they're not, do you realize how many likes, followers, or just general clout you'd get if you could actually provide photographic or video evidence of the Loch Ness Monster on social media? Water pollution has been a serious problem since the 19th century. In the context of the modern Nessie craze, it's always been there, just like motorboats. One more word: sonar. It's more because of the overwhelming odds against any plesiosaur surviving the K-Pg event. Unfortunately, I cannot find the publication (if there is any), so I'll just quote Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_MonsterEvery organism loses scales, skin, bodily fluids etc. which then remain in the environment. By investigating the DNA from environmental samples (called "eDNA", short of "environmental DNA"), scientists can learn what types of organisms live in an environment. In short, the Loch Ness contains no prehistoric beasts, but there is a giant eel which might be what people think is Nessie. This is as close to a settled case as a cryptid can get. Yeah. I guess those two cryptozoologists from Penn & Teller: Bullshit might have been on the mark (in one episode of the show where they went after cryptozoology, they interviewed two British cryptozoologists hunting down the Loch Ness Monster, and the two agreed it was some giant eel). Interestingly, though, I remember one of the people they interviewed in that episode saying that the biggest thing pulled out of Loch Ness was a sturgeon, which they found no trace of in this survey. |
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Post by creature386 on Oct 2, 2019 1:52:18 GMT 5
You are right Nesse should not be treated like Russel's teapot. Nonetheless while believers often make unrealistic claims. Skeptics don't even consider the possibility that something might be behind those stories. If real nessie would be only an occasional visitor to the Lake Ness. Most of his time he would spend in the sea. Only sometimes appearing in the lakes of Scotland. Now although I'm doubtful that Loch Ness monster exists. I don't discard this as a possibility. Being a skeptic doesn't mean you outright discard the possibility of something. You just don't accept it as a fact until you have an actual proof. Not ridicule it outright. Scientist don't take Nessie seriously because of the fact that Lake Ness appeared after extinction of dinosaurs. However there in an underground river connecting Lake ness and several other lakes to the ocean. The river is much older than lake ness itself. if some plesiosaurs actually survived the mass extinction they could have simply swim to the lake through those underground rivers at some point in more recent geological time. They could also appear there very sporadically. Making them more difficult to identify in biological samples. And seen more rarely than if an animal lived there. another words more difficult to observe on more regular basis. Now obviously I don't conciser that proof of any kind. But combined with photos and sonar. That does not prove existence of Loch Ness monster to me. But makes me believe that I cannot discard that possibly outright. Of course, you can never completely discard a possibiltiy in science, but that thinking is unproductive. Hence, the Russel's teapot analogy. What we care for in science are probabilities and a lack of evidence makes Nessie's unlikely evidence even unlikelier. Let's look at Bayes' theorem, for example:  (By mattbuck, since we nowadays Attribute) P(A/B) is what we want, the likelihood of the hypothesis (that Nessi exists) given the data. P(A) is the likelihood of the hypothesis before considering any data ("a priori"). P(B/A) is the likelihood of the data given the hypothesis. P(B) is essentially the sum of P(A)*P(B/A) for both the Nessi hypothesis and the no Nessi hypothesis (P(B) (it's less confusing in the equation you find on RationalWiki: rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bayesian#Bayes.27_Equation ). Now, how high is P(A), the a priori likelihood of Nessi existing. As the geological records are rather reliable, I'd say 1%. Now, how high is P(B/A), the likelihood of the data given the hypothesis? Or, in other words, if Nessie existed, what would we expect to find. Now, it is of course possible that Nessie, through some rivers, evaded eDNA detection or detection through sonar. However, in most possible worlds that contain Nessie, we would expect to find Nessie. Thus, I'd say if Nessie existed, we'd have a 90% likelihood of finding evidence that it exists. We have none, so P(B/a) = 0.1 Thus: P(A/B) = (P(A)*P(B/A))/P(B) = 0.01*0.1/(0.01*0.1+0.99*0.9) = 1.12E-3 In other words, the likelihood of Nessie existing with these made-up values dropped from 1% to 0.12%. While the values are made up, the lack of evidence makes Nessie's already unlikely existence even unlikelier and that's what we should focus on. |
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Post by kekistani on May 13, 2020 13:13:59 GMT 5
BASED EEL
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Post by Infinity Blade on Jan 10, 2023 2:03:40 GMT 5
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