A professor at a Scottish university told whether someone lives in Loch Ness

Eoin O'faodhagain, a Loch Ness monster hunter from Ireland, is sure that Nessie has woken up. He has been watching the lake since 1987, using photo and video equipment, and, according to him, he has seen the mysterious monster at least forty times. At the end of March, he installed a webcam on the shore of the lake, and it recorded two blurry objects floating on the water. The hunter posted the video on social networks. Skeptics stated: these are logs or garbage. But Eoin objected. Allegedly, one of the objects deliberately maneuvered...

Over the past quarter century, "eyewitnesses" have reported about Nessie 1,136 times. To understand what the Irishman's camera captured, Vecherka contacted Kirsten Agnew, professor of the Department of Paleobiology at the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Aberdeen.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Agnew! What could homegrown and not-so-experienced researchers see in Loch Ness?

— Hello. It's amazing that anyone else is interested in this. I think believing in Nessie is akin to believing in Santa Claus.

— So it was a log?

— Not a fact. The monster was first mentioned in the monastery annals of the VI century. Allegedly, St. Columba, the baptist in Ireland, while singing the funeral of a fisherman, heard from the villagers that the unfortunate man was dragged to the bottom by an unknown beast. And allegedly they have repeatedly seen in the water a "creature of the unclean", with a snake neck and a massive body. The saint, they say, himself witnessed the monster's attack on a guy who was extracting silt from the bottom for fertilizers. He drove Nessie away with a cross. Those were dark times: the villagers also believed in the Tarascan dragon...

— But the descriptions are similar: Nessie has a long neck, a back with a hump or crest, a thick belly...

— Nessie has been called a plesiosaur, a large turtle, a whale in different years. They described motionless eyes, a fish-like tail, dark gray fur or greenish-brown scales... Everyone saw what they wanted. The existence of the animal is not documented. Nessie was repeatedly tried to be filmed, then — on digital media. In 1933, this was done by photographer Hugo Gray. In my opinion, his photo shows a dead fishing boat, and her "neck" is from a broken piece of sailing equipment. Athlete Arthur Grant said that he almost crashed his motorcycle into Nessie resting on the shore. He mentioned that she looked like either a seal or a dinosaur...

— "Looks like an elephant and a hedgehog"!

— Exactly. I think the young man came up with everything. Then the director of a local hotel, a maid, a monk again, a cameraman, a Dutch doctor, hundreds of photographers told about Nessie. Bloggers are doing it now. But scientists have not identified the "animal" in any picture or video.

— But there were also serious studies? Nessie, they say, even has her own routine. Sleeps in winter, becomes active in spring...

— You know, in spring, not only ancient animals awaken, but also people's fantasies... The largest research program was led by Professor Adrian Shine. In 2016, scientists lowered the radio-controlled Munin device to the bottom. And they found Nessie! It was a giant dinosaur doll made in the late 1960s for the filming of a movie about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The props were left at the bottom.

— Fairy tales die when people stop believing in them. It's even a pity.

— This fairy tale will not die. Everyone wants a miracle. I think if you had an enterprising hotelier on Baikal, he would not refuse to arouse common interest by "settling" some "Siberian dragon" in the lake. People would believe it.