The Loch Ness Monster, often called Nessie, is one of the most famous cryptids in the world. A cryptid is an animal that some people believe exists but science has not confirmed. Nessie is said to live in Loch Ness, a long, deep lake in the Scottish Highlands that is 23 miles long and over 700 feet deep in places.
People have been reporting sightings of something large in the lake for nearly 1,500 years. The first written account comes from the year 565, when an Irish monk wrote about a giant beast in the water. The big modern wave of sightings started in the 1930s, when a famous (and later proven to be fake) photo showed a long neck poking out of the water.
In 2018, scientists used DNA testing to scan every drop of water in the lake. They could identify almost every living thing down there. They did not find any unknown dinosaur-sized animal, but they did find a huge amount of eel DNA. One theory now is that the “monster” sightings could be unusually large eels swimming near the surface.
