Scientist Believes DNA Test Will Finally Solve The Loch Ness Monster Mystery

[Gutter Monkey]

A scientist from New Zealand has claimed that a simple DNA could finally solve the mystery of ‘Nessie’ the Loch Ness monster.

Professor Neil Gemmell from the University of Otago, will use the forensics test to look for traces of DNA that do not match known animals that already live in the lake.

Basically they're going to run a DNA test on the water of the loch to try and find traces of monster

‘All large organisms lose cells as they move through their environment. New genomic technology is sensitive enough to pick this up and we can use comparisons to databases that span the majority of known living things.’ he explained.

‘If there was anything unusual in the loch these DNA tools would be likely to pick up that evidence.’

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entr...b0b3918c84ad17

DNA testing didn't verify the existence of Bigfoot and I'm pretty sure they're going to have similar results here, eg: the test results will be inconclusive so the believers will keep on believing and the skeptics will stay skeptical.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Most likely they're just going to find some degraded DNA that isn't in good enough condition to get a conclusive match for anything and claim that it might be from the monster.

Which was really a story the locals cooked up as a tourism gimmick.

[Brad from Georgia]

When we visited Dumnadrochit in 2000, my wife and I discovered that the Monster Centre & Exhibition, despite having a plesiosaur-like statue outside, actually presented displays and explanations that debunked the monster story. It was a nice day for monster-hunting--overcast, with the hills on either side of the loch vanishing in the low clouds, and a thin drizzle falling into the choppy gray water--and looking at the odd wave formations caused, I suppose, by the deep water and the narrow banks, we understood how easy it would be to suppose something big was swimming nearby.

By the way, the water straight out of the loch tastes peaty. It's supposed to be very pure, free of microorganisms, and all I'll say is that we survived with no ill effects after swigging some of it.

[Ali Infree]

A peaty taste is not a bad thing...I like my single malts like that. Although DW claims that several smell of fire rather than peat.

Ali

[DawnStorm]

I saw some program a month or two ago that speculated on Nessie's being a Greenland shark. Apparently Greenland sharks are known to inhabit the loch's mouth and waters surrounding that mouth.

[UEL]

By happy coincidence, I was listening to a podcast on my way into work today that discussed using DNA to find these mysterious creatures. It focussed on the Yeti (it had recently been proven that most Yeti identified remains were mostly bear, with some dog) but did discuss the Loch Ness monster and Sasquatch.

The scientist being interviewed in the podcast did not think that any amount of DNA evidence will prove to real believers that these creatures don't exist.

But she was excited about the genetic diversity in Himalayan and Tibetan brown bear populations.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

I saw some program a month or two ago that speculated on Nessie's being a Greenland shark. Apparently Greenland sharks are known to inhabit the loch's mouth and waters surrounding that mouth.

That was something that River Monsters pushed as an explanation in their season finale one year. Jeremy Wade still failed to demonstrate that Greenland sharks actually swim up the river to reach the loch.

I'm skeptical of the idea: Greenland sharks are known to enter the Saint Lawrence Seaway, but given their size it would be rather difficult to miss them if they routinely swam up the River Ness. Seals, on the other hand, are sighted swimming up the river.

[jimmy101_again]

Originally Posted by crocoduck_hunter

Most likely they're just going to find some degraded DNA that isn't in good enough condition to get a conclusive match for anything and claim that it might be from the monster..

Most likely thing is that they'll find hundreds or thousands of perfectly good DNA sequences that don't match anything. But that is expected since the vast majority of species on earth haven't been sequenced. The question will then become how close does a Loch specific sequence have to be to say a known bacteria for it to be called a bacterial sequence? How close to a known salamander sequence does it have to be to be called a salamander sequence versus Nessys?