Why Loch Ness Monster sceptics need to come up with another excuse for sightings

The vast majority of sightings of Nessie are not of the ‘biologically impossible’ creature depicted in many traditional images

We all know what the Loch Ness Monster looks like, even if we’ve never actually seen it ourselves. Clearly, it is a serpentine creature that undulates across water, creating three or so loops above the surface.

However, according to ‘science’, this would be a “biological impossibility”. Quod erat demonstrandum, Nessie doesn’t exist and it’s all just made-up nonsense. Case closed.

Or is it? According to new research by St Andrews University, only 1.5 per cent of possible Nessie sightings talk about seeing loops or hoops, suggesting the people making the reports have not been influenced by traditional imagery dating back to the 1500s.

A famous photograph of the Loch Ness Monster from 1934, which later turned out to be a hoax (Picture: Keystone) | Getty Images

“This insight supports the contention that the majority of eyewitness reports are actually based on some underlying physical reality,” the researchers wrote before adding, rather disappointingly, “even if not representing an actual encounter with an unknown species”.

So Nessie sceptics will have to come up with another excuse as to why people keep seeing Scotland’s most famous monster, which is clearly every bit as real as the furtive haggises roaming the Highlands, the kelpies, and the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui.