Loch Ness monster: scientists have found an explanation for what is happening

Engineer Robert Craig, who suggested that people who talk about how they saw Nessie and heard the sounds she made, could actually see and hear... pine trunks rising from the bottom of the lake.



Along the shores of Loch Ness there is a whole forest of Scottish pine, in the trunks of which there is a lot of resin, much more than in other coniferous species. If an old, obsolete tree gets into the water, it begins to rot from the inside, and the resin contained in it explodes with bubbles, since carbon dioxide is formed during rotting. When too much gas accumulates, the tree floats to the surface. There, the bubbles burst from the pressure drop, the gas comes out, and the barrel sinks back to the bottom. All this is accompanied by a loud splashing of water and a variety of sounds made by bursting bubbles and gas escaping from them. These sounds can be similar to snorting, howling, growling – in a word, to the "voice" of a large animal.

If a bubble forms at the end of the trunk, it will look exactly like the neck of a round-headed dinosaur. However, even if the bubbles are in other places, protruding from afar, and even through the frequent fog on Scottish lakes, the trunk can still be mistaken for someone's neck and head. Especially if a person is ready to see a dinosaur in the lake and is waiting to meet it – the imagination easily "retouches" the image of the trunk, turning it into Nessie.

Robert Craig's theory is also confirmed by the fact that most of the Scottish pines grow around Loch Ness. There are fewer such pines on the shores of Loch Morar, and the monster is seen much less often there, while on the shores of other lakes these trees are found only rarely, and dinosaurs are rarely seen in them.

At all times, from ancient times to the present day, local residents could see floating pine logs in these lakes and hear them "snorting".