Loch Ness monster could be a
giant eel, researcher claims
By Chris Ciaccia
After months of speculation
surrounding a study into whether the Loch Ness monster was real, the researcher
behind it has claimed it could be a giant eel and not a giant plesiosaur from a
long-lost era.
Speaking at a press conference
early Thursday morning, New Zealand researcher Neil Gemmell gave his
"plausible" explanation for what people may have seen in the past,
but added that it is most certainly not a dinosaur.
"We can't find any evidence
of a creature that's remotely related to that in our environmental-DNA sequence
data," Gemmell said, according to the BBC. "So, sorry, I don't think
the plesiosaur idea holds up based on the data that we have obtained."
"There is a very significant
amount of eel DNA," Gemmell, a geneticist from New Zealand's University of
Otago, added. "Eels are very plentiful in Loch Ness, with eel DNA found at
pretty much every location sampled – there are a lot of them. So, are they
giant eels? Well, our data doesn't reveal their size, but the sheer quantity of
the material says that we can't discount the possibility that there may be
giant eels in Loch Ness."
He continued: "Therefore we
can't discount the possibility that what people see and believe is the Loch
Ness monster might be a giant eel."
European eels can grow up to 5
feet, according to the USGS. They have a diet that consists of insect larvae,
mollusks, worms and crustaceans. They're also able to "survive near
freezing temperatures" and are seen as "remarkably mobile,"
capable of moving over dams, weirs and even land, adding credence to Gemmell's
findings.
