What is Nessie?
Loch Ness is a long, deep and very dark lake in the Scottish Highlands. Since the 1930s, people have reported seeing a large animal there with a long neck and humps. Many picture it as a surviving plesiosaur, a marine reptile from the age of the dinosaurs.
How the legend began
One early trace appears in the life of Saint Columba, written by Adomnán in the 7th century. In it, Columba drives a monster out of the River Ness. The modern Nessie, however, dates from 1933. That year a new road was built along the north shore, the loch suddenly came into full view, and a newspaper report about a strange animal set off a wave of sightings.
The photo
The most famous picture, the “Surgeon’s Photograph” of 1934, shows a head and neck rising from the water. In 1994 it came out that the photo had been staged with a toy submarine fitted with a model head. A 2018 survey of environmental DNA from the loch found no sign of a reptile, but a striking amount of eel DNA.
Related creatures
Many cold, deep lakes have their own monsters. In Canada, people tell of Old Ned in Lake Utopia, New Brunswick.