Lake Monsters

[DaComm]

What do guys think of the existence of Lake Monsters as depicted in evidence such as these photographs:

http://0.tqn.com/d/paranormal/1/0/6/B/champ_lg.jpg
http://www.betweendreamsmag.com/strangescience/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/nessie1.jpghttp://www.cryptomundo.com/wp-content/LakeVanMonster.jpg

What is your take on the possibility of suriviving prehistoric creatures in our bodies of waters? I mean, we recently found ceolcanth, and these things were thought to have been extinct for millions and millions of years. If you do not find anything unusual about such beings, what do you propose such sightings are more often than not?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

What do guys think of the existence of Lake Monsters as depicted in evidence such as these photographs:

What is your take on the possibility of suriviving prehistoric creatures in our bodies of waters? I mean, we recently found ceolcanth, and these things were thought to have been extinct for millions and millions of years. If you do not find anything unusual about such beings, what do you propose such sightings are more often than not?

Some duck, floating tree crap (Rob Rainer, sod off you hack) and I forget what that last forgery was, silly Lake Van monster... something pulled by a boat or something.

EEEK! Not the Latimeria comparison, it fails for many reasons;

Latimeria is not an unchanged species, it is not identical to its extinct relatives - and most importantly, there does today exist a fossil record of the evolution of the modern Latimeria from its ancestors, so it's not a 70 million year gap - obviously, no such record exists for any preposterous ideas about "SURVIVING DINOSAURS" (Nutty creationists love to make up such stories though, they see dinosaurs everywhere) or for that matter any surviving prehistoric reptiles (In Loch Ness? Poor bugger would freeze to death even if it managed to find enough food!)

Most of those sightings are just normal things that people have a hard time telling from afar - boats or normal animals - most of the rest are just utter humbug.

However, should any sea monster exist (much more likely than any lake monster) it is no doubt of an unknown species, not a prehistoric one.

[Widerstand]

However, should any sea monster exist (much more likely than any lake monster) it is no doubt of an unknown species, not a prehistoric one.

The possibility of Lake Monsters is indeed small, but there are a bunch of living fossils already discovered in the sea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil#Animals

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

The possibility of Lake Monsters is indeed small, but there are a bunch of living fossils already discovered in the sea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil#Animals

The term living fossil is abused and virtually meaningless.

Sometimes people just throw it onto something that they think "looks so alien and strange, it must be prehistoric!" Other times they are simply common animals that have a semblance to certain prehistoric relatives--

To go from a new species of an animal which has a stable fossil record and often even other living relatives to an arbitrary Plesiosaurus flying out of a time portal after a 65 million year absence at great depth is quite a big leap to take.

[x371322]

I think they're a bunch of whale penises... no joke.

http://forgetomori.com/2008/criptozoology/cetaceans-sex-sea-serpents/

[A.R.Amistad]

you need to watch River Monsters dude. I don't believe these photos, but you'd be amazed at what kind of crazy things live in freshwater

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The Loch Ness monster myth was made up by prominent townspeople of Inverness, Scotland in the late 30s in an attempt (eventually very successful but it took several decades to catch on) to attract tourists. As I remember Inverness has two "Nessie" museums and the more "highbrow" scientific museum indirectly admits the whole thing was a hoax based on fragments of Celtic mythology and medievil legends.

The "alien abduction" phenomena is more interesting, I think. I know several, highly intelligent people who claim to have had an interaction with an alien. I strongly doubt this has truth to it but its interesting to speculate what psychological process are going on.

[TheSamsquatch]

The Loch Ness Monster is fucking real, as is Sasquatch. No sarcasm or joking.
Also real is the Canadian version of the Sasquatch (see my username).

[A.R.Amistad]

There was a thread on here that I started not too long ago about the Bull Shark, the most vicious species of shark. Well, its resistant to fresh water and has been found as far inland as north of St. Louis on the Mississippi River, and there are now a few reports of Bull Shark in the Ohio River near where I live.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/ah-sharks-near-t122840/index.html?highlight=Bull+Shark

[A.R.Amistad]

you may enjoy this site
http://animal.discovery.com/tv/river-monsters/

[DaComm]

There was a thread on here that I started not too long ago about the Bull Shark, the most vicious species of shark. Well, its resistant to fresh water and has been found as far inland as north of St. Louis on the Mississippi River, and there are now a few reports of Bull Shark in the Ohio River near where I live.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/ah-sharks-near-t122840/index.html?highlight=Bull+Shark


Really? Ohio. Wow. I've only heard of them along the East Cost, primarily from a little something I read about a series of shark attacks on humans in 1916 on the Jersey Shore. Although a Bull Shark does fall a bit short of prehistoric creature or Lake Monster :glare:.

[A.R.Amistad]

Really? Ohio. Wow. I've only heard of them along the East Cost, primarily from a little something I read about a series of shark attacks on humans in 1916 on the Jersey Shore. Although a Bull Shark does fall a bit short of prehistoric creature or Lake Monster :glare:.

The Bull Shark has always been tolerant to freshwater. In fact, what it does usually is it lays its eggs in river deltas, and the young hatch in the river and theoretically swim back out to sea. However, several young have apparently decided to swim the other way upriver because of the abundance of food in the river and the fact that they are basically unchallenged predators in the rivers. I've even heard of an attack on a human by one up in Lake Michigan, but I can't seem to find any documentation of that one. However, there is documentation in other parts of the world. Someone in Australia was training their racehorse in the 80 miles inland on the Brisbane River (it helps the horse's joints) and the horse was attacked by a Bull Shark, but lived. They have caught Bull Sharks north of St. Louis I know, but I have a few friends here in Louisville who claim to have seen the Shark. Here is some interesting evidence of the Bull Shark in rivers. This isn't in America, but its pretty startling:

http://animal.discovery.com/videos/river-monsters-worlds-biggest/

also note, Bull Sharks are the most vicious man-killers of Sharks, worse than the Great White. Most deaths of humans by Sharks are because of these species.

[DaComm]

The Bull Shark has always been tolerant to freshwater. In fact, what it does usually is it lays its eggs in river deltas, and the young hatch in the river and theoretically swim back out to sea. However, several young have apparently decided to swim the other way upriver because of the abundance of food in the river and the fact that they are basically unchallenged predators in the rivers. I've even heard of an attack on a human by one up in Lake Michigan, but I can't seem to find any documentation of that one. However, there is documentation in other parts of the world. Someone in Australia was training their racehorse in the 80 miles inland on the Brisbane River (it helps the horse's joints) and the horse was attacked by a Bull Shark, but lived. They have caught Bull Sharks north of St. Louis I know, but I have a few friends here in Louisville who claim to have seen the Shark. Here is some interesting evidence of the Bull Shark in rivers. This isn't in America, but its pretty startling:

http://animal.discovery.com/videos/river-monsters-worlds-biggest/

also note, Bull Sharks are the most vicious man-killers of Sharks, worse than the Great White. Most deaths of humans by Sharks are because of these species.


:P I still like the Mako shark better. Who can resist a shark that can jump 30 feet into the air and destory small ships? I sense a shark-tendency war coming....:D

[A.R.Amistad]

:P I still like the Mako shark better. Who can resist a shark that can jump 30 feet into the air and destory small ships? I sense a shark-tendency war coming....:D
you can tell that to the bull shark whose nibbling your leg the next time you go kayaking:p

[DaComm]

you can tell that to the bull shark whose nibbling your leg the next time you go kayaking:p

I hate the out-doors. And plus, when going by nibble-worthy standars, whatever that may be, I'm sure my legs aren't nibble-worthy.

[A.R.Amistad]

I hate the out-doors. And plus, when going by nibble-worthy standars, whatever that may be, I'm sure my legs aren't nibble-worthy.

1. of they can go in fresh water, they can go through.....your toilet:scared:
2. All legs are yummy....unless they appear to be tofu.

[DaComm]

1. of they can go in fresh water, they can go through.....your toilet:scared:
2. All legs are yummy....unless they appear to be tofu.



Your right. Nothing worse than a leg made of tofu
There is no water near me. Not for hundreds and hundreds of miles. I live in a desert. There is no kayak. There is no shark. And most predominantly...:confused:

[Blackscare]

There was a thread on here that I started not too long ago about the Bull Shark, the most vicious species of shark. Well, its resistant to fresh water and has been found as far inland as north of St. Louis on the Mississippi River, and there are now a few reports of Bull Shark in the Ohio River near where I live.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/ah-sharks-near-t122840/index.html?highlight=Bull+Shark


Psh, come to the Atlantic northeast and we'll show you some sharks.

[A.R.Amistad]

Psh, come to the Atlantic northeast and we'll show you some sharks.
and I guarantee you the most vicious ones will be Bullsharks

[DaComm]

and I guarantee you the most vicious ones will be Bullsharks


Wouldn't it be something if there was a dilophosaurus-bullshark hybrid? :thumbup1:

[A.R.Amistad]

Wouldn't it be something if there was a dilophosaurus-bullshark hybrid? :thumbup1:

...in the service of Sauron of Mordor :thumbup1:

[Blackscare]

and I guarantee you the most vicious ones will be Bullsharks

If a shark's attacking you, it's fucking attacking you.

There are bigger sharks, and more scary looking sharks, than bull sharks. I don't care what they score on some scale, a shark is a shark is a godless killing machine.

Plus, there are a lot more sharks in the waters over towards the northeast, so you people should stop whining because a few made it up a river :p If they eat a few Ohioans, who cares anyway? Like my pappy used to say "Ohioans are subhuman and should be gassed".

Strange man, he was.

Sharks are reactionary, anyway.

[A.R.Amistad]

a shark is a shark is a godless killing machine.

Whale Sharks are the biggest shark but they are very friendly. They have no teeth, eat krill and let you swim with them :)


Plus, there are a lot more sharks in the waters over towards the northeast, so you people should stop whining because a few made it up a river http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/smilies/001_tongue.gif If they eat a few Ohioans, who cares anyway? Like my pappy used to say "Ohioans are subhuman and should be gassed".

But I am not from Ohio


Strange man, he was.

Not too strange. I've been to Ohio :bored:


Sharks are reactionary, anyway

Damn it! And all this time I've been recruiting them into the party! :mad:

[Blackscare]

They have no teeth, eat krill and let you swim with them http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/smilies/001_smile.gif

Oh, so we're just supposed to disregard the mass killings of krill?

Typical white male human chauvanist-anthropocentrism :mad:

[Glenn Beck]

What the fuck, you guys. And you wonder why everyone says this forum is going to shit. You can't even keep a serious scientific discussion about majestic creatures from a forgotten time that are with us today from going off in some off-topic bullshit about sharks. I'm pretty disappointed :\

[jake williams]

What do guys think of the existence of Lake Monsters as depicted in evidence such as these photographs:

[photos]

What is your take on the possibility of suriviving prehistoric creatures in our bodies of waters? I mean, we recently found ceolcanth, and these things were thought to have been extinct for millions and millions of years. If you do not find anything unusual about such beings, what do you propose such sightings are more often than not?
You can go to just about any body of water and see driftwood that looks more like a sea monster than this.

[A.R.Amistad]

Oh, so we're just supposed to disregard the mass killings of krill?

Typical white male human chauvanist-anthropocentrism :mad:
Krill are reactionary

[nip]

i guess anything is possible because it would be really hard to prove it didnt exist

[DaComm]

What the fuck, you guys. And you wonder why everyone says this forum is going to shit. You can't even keep a serious scientific discussion about majestic creatures from a forgotten time that are with us today from going off in some off-topic bullshit about sharks. I'm pretty disappointed :\

The forum got closed after Socialism via Tank brigade ruined our hopes, dreams, and fun. If you propose that they may be an unidentified creature of some sort please do share your insight.

[NGNM85]

This is entertaining stuff, and excellent fodder for movies and tv shows, but that's it. Most 'experts' claim these sightings to be some sort of pliosaur, which were not strictly aquatic creatures. These dinosaurs had to surface regularly to breathe. The probability that such a creature could surface so many times per day, so close to civilization and remain unnoticed is preposterous. Then we have the problem of how such an organism and it's ancestors miraculously survived all this time. Lastly, even if this organism beat the odds, as it were, in order to sustain a population to the present day, given the lifespan of these creatures there would have to have been a substantial community of these organisms. I'm sure someone would've noticed that. Not to mention the effect such a creature would have on the surrounding biosphere. These legends are superstitions brought on by overactive imaginations and can be found in virtually all substantial bodies of water, the most famous Loch Ness of Scotland, Champ of Lake Champlain, or the Mokole-Mbembe of the Congo river basin.
There are still vast sections of the ocean, too deep for submarines, that have yet to be explored, and no doubt contain fascinating varieties of sealife waiting to be discovered,.....but no plesiosaurs. Condolances.

[Ele'ill]

you can tell that to the bull shark whose nibbling your leg the next time you go kayaking:p


How would the shark nibble on your leg if you were kayaking?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

This is entertaining stuff, and excellent fodder for movies and tv shows, but that's it. Most 'experts' claim these sightings to be some sort of pliosaur, which were not strictly aquatic creatures. These dinosaurs had to surface regularly to breathe. The probability that such a creature could surface so many times per day, so close to civilization and remain unnoticed is preposterous. Then we have the problem of how such an organism and it's ancestors miraculously survived all this time. Lastly, even if this organism beat the odds, as it were, in order to sustain a population to the present day, given the lifespan of these creatures there would have to have been a substantial community of these organisms. I'm sure someone would've noticed that. Not to mention the effect such a creature would have on the surrounding biosphere. These legends are superstitions brought on by overactive imaginations and can be found in virtually all substantial bodies of water, the most famous Loch Ness of Scotland, Champ of Lake Champlain, or the Mokole-Mbembe of the Congo river basin.
There are still vast sections of the ocean, too deep for submarines, that have yet to be explored, and no doubt contain fascinating varieties of sealife waiting to be discovered,.....but no plesiosaurs. Condolances.

Pliosaurs were not dinosaurs. They were unrelated aquatic reptiles, like Plesiosaurs and Icthyosaurs. Any "expert" suggesting a lake monster is a Pliosaur is a forgery and a moron, self-proclaimed "cryptozoologists" have about the same trustworthiness as so called Ufologists after all, merely being a bunch of quacks. Pliosaurs were primarily oceanic animals; although I think you actually mean Plesiosaurs - Pliosaurs had short stout necks and a more robust body, as opposed to the barrel with fins and the long slender neck with a small head of Plesiosauria.

Every now and then the decomposing body of a whale or a shark - typically a basking shark - will wash up on a beach somewhere and within a few years you'll have some creationist furiously masturbating to scripture coming across it on some obscure Russian tabloids website and thinking it must be some prehistoric plesiosaur or something - the archetypal specimen for this concept being the so called "Stronsay beast" that washed up on one of the Orkney Islands in 1808. The carcass was washed up on some cliffs and appeared to have three pairs of flippers and a tapering neck with a small head - like that of a plesiosaurus, had such been known at the time. It was covered with what appeared to be "hairs", and appeared to glow slightly in the dark.

The glow was likely caused by decomposition bacteria. The carcass length was supposedly a full 17 meters (57 ft), much larger than any known basking shark (largest verified being a 16 ton, 12.3 m specimen caught in Bay of Fundy in 1851). A part of the spine was kept and sent to Edinburgh, and it was identified as a sea serpent by some hack - though already at the time, some men of science speculated it was but a shark. A fragment of the spine was still kept in a museum in Edinburgh till at least the 1980's - I'm not sure what happened to it later, it might have been lost in a museum transfer like often happens with such things - and it was clearly the spine of a basking shark. I'm not sure from exactly where in the column the two or three vertebrae came, but they did not appear to be anomalous in size.

A very severely decayed basking shark carcass washed up on Vancouver Island in 1947 - indeed, little remained but strands of muscle hanging from the narrow vertebral column which measured around 12 meters long. The case is interesting because the number of vertebrae was counted - the body had a as many as 145 vertebrae, compared to a usual amount in a basking shark of 105 or so.

Many basking shark carcasses that do wash up and get sensationalised into sea-monster hysteria are typically in the upper reaches of normal basking shark sizes. There is the famous example of the basking shark carcass that was trawled by a Japanese fishing boat off New Zealand in 1977, which made a lot of fuzz in the news when a fisherman imagined it had skeletal fins and professors in Tokyo started fancying it was a plesiosaurus for no good reason and raved on about Nessie. It was about 10 meters long.

[DaComm]

This is entertaining stuff, and excellent fodder for movies and tv shows, but that's it. Most 'experts' claim these sightings to be some sort of pliosaur, which were not strictly aquatic creatures. These dinosaurs had to surface regularly to breathe. The probability that such a creature could surface so many times per day, so close to civilization and remain unnoticed is preposterous. Then we have the problem of how such an organism and it's ancestors miraculously survived all this time. Lastly, even if this organism beat the odds, as it were, in order to sustain a population to the present day, given the lifespan of these creatures there would have to have been a substantial community of these organisms. I'm sure someone would've noticed that. Not to mention the effect such a creature would have on the surrounding biosphere. These legends are superstitions brought on by overactive imaginations and can be found in virtually all substantial bodies of water, the most famous Loch Ness of Scotland, Champ of Lake Champlain, or the Mokole-Mbembe of the Congo river basin.
There are still vast sections of the ocean, too deep for submarines, that have yet to be explored, and no doubt contain fascinating varieties of sealife waiting to be discovered,.....but no plesiosaurs. Condolances.

Mokole-Mbembe is reportedly a Sauropod however, nothing close to either a plesiosaur or a pliosaur.

[Devrim]

Not to mention the effect such a creature would have on the surrounding biosphere. These legends are superstitions brought on by overactive imaginations and can be found in virtually all substantial bodies of water, the most famous Loch Ness of Scotland, Champ of Lake Champlain, or the Mokole-Mbembe of the Congo river basin.
There are still vast sections of the ocean, too deep for submarines, that have yet to be explored, and no doubt contain fascinating varieties of sealife waiting to be discovered,....

Absolutely right, there may be surprises in the deep sea, but in Loch Ness (max. depth 230m deep), Lake Champlain (max. depth 120m deep= and even the deepest river in the world, the Congo river basin, at 230m deep, one would assume that modern submarines, which could reach depths like those at the time of the Second World War, and nowadays have a test depth of 490m may just have noticed any wild animals down there.

Devrim

[The Ben G]

Prehistoric creatures? Probably not.
Undiscovered creatures? Most likely.
Pieces of Floating Crap? Very Probable.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Mokole-Mbembe is reportedly a Sauropod however, nothing close to either a plesiosaur or a pliosaur.

Well Mokele-Mbembe is only a sauropod in the mind of lunatics like Roy Mackal who goes on his expeditions and show the local population pictures of dinosaurs and gives them gift whenever they give him an answer he likes, so of course they'll show him the sauropods he want. All the sauropod illustrations he brought with him were anatomically incorrect at that. If the creatures is more than legend it's something unknown. It's behaviour and aquatic nature is not like a sauropod at all.

There were also a lot of frequent newspaper stories in the early 1900's about dinosaurs in Africa, particularly in Britain and colonial empires like Belgium, because it represents a primal savagery greater than that of lions and tigers, and Africa being a great vast unknown for the colonial powers to exploit; "here be dinosaurs and exotic shit we can take".

[Os Cangaceiros]

There's supposedly a lake monster in Lake Iliamnia, or so some Native Alaskans told me once.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

There's supposedly a lake monster in Lake Iliamnia, or so some Native Alaskans told me once.

Yes, if by that you mean a population of large sturgeon, sure.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yes, if by that you mean a population of large sturgeon, sure.

It's pretty rare to see sturgeon in Alaskan waters, actually.

Although it's even rarer to see a sea monster in Alaskan waters.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

It's pretty rare to see sturgeon in Alaskan waters, actually.

Although it's even rarer to see a sea monster in Alaskan waters.

Indeed they are none to common, but apparently they have been observed in the lake, so they are likely to be the origin of the lake-monster myths.

The presence of such fish is a wonder on its own, anyhow.

[Os Cangaceiros]

There's some sharks we catch longlining that look kind of like sea monsters. They're huge and grotesque and only live in the deepest parts of the bay I fish in. My parents call them "mud sharks", although I'm sure that's not their real name.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

There's some sharks we catch longlining that look kind of like sea monsters. They're huge and grotesque and only live in the deepest parts of the bay I fish in. My parents call them "mud sharks", although I'm sure that's not their real name.

What kind of "grotesque appearance" do they have?

I've heard of it being a name for spiny dogfish, but they are not very large at all.

[Os Cangaceiros]

What kind of "grotesque appearance" do they have?

I've heard of it being a name for spiny dogfish, but they are not very large at all.

They're jet black all over, with little beady eyes and they look...somewhat obese, I guess. They're definitely not sleek like the other variety (http://www.jakejordan.com/images/643_Gary_s_Salmon_Shark_2005.jpg) of shark that we commonly catch, which I guess is the origin of their other nickname: "blubbos", lol. They're also much bigger than the salmon shark.

[Os Cangaceiros]

We have dog sharks, too. A lot of people have a vendetta against them, viewing them as an invasive species and such.

[A.R.Amistad]

a mud shark...http://image64.webshots.com/164/8/78/72/424987872PNmPqE_fs.jpg

[Os Cangaceiros]

Looks like a dog shark to me.