Karl Shuker has written an article that is meant to finally sink the oft-repeated story of a watery Siberian cryptid. Additionally, Darren Naish seems to have missed the otter sensitivity, nonsense and humor in some thoughts about the Loch Ness Monster here.

As Darren Naish writes: “One of the most interesting lake monster accounts in history was N. Gladkikh’s sighting of 1964 from Lake Khaiyr, Siberia. Gladkikh’s sketch of a long-necked quadrupedal reptile with a fin along its back has to be one of the most-reproduced lake monster illustrations. Alas, as Karl explains in the new issue of Fortean Times (232, Feb 2008), we now know that Gladkikh fabricated the sighting. Karl’s article is…Shuker, K. P. N. 2008. The truth behind the monster. Fortean Times 232, 58-59.”

Darren writes, “with apologies for Karl for stealing his thunder,” his overview of the debunking is here: “The sad death of the Lake Khaiyr monster.”

In a strange aside in Darren Naish’s blog on Shuker’s article, Naish writes “…by the way, I totally disagree with Loren Coleman’s contention on cryptomundo that the object in the [Dr. Kenneth] Wilson photo is an otter’s tail.”

Naish does not elaborate why he writes so abruptly what he has written.

For the record, here is what I wrote:

“My reading of the early opinion of this object, from zoologist Maurice Burton and others, was not that it was the head of some prehistoric animal, so much as the head of a water bird or the tail of a mammal diving into the water. I have said and written for years that the photo was never that important (other than as an icon), and probably was nothing more that the misunderstood image of the head or the tail of an otter. Yes, folks, I think the ‘Surgeon’s Photo’ is of an otter.”

Even otters sometimes fight and look unnatural.

Perhaps Darren Naish does not read this blog enough to know that, while specifically truthful about the openmindness I have for considering the water bird-otter-water mammal explanations for the Surgeon’s Photo mentioned, I also was alluding to a running joke here harking back to Joe Nickel’s suggestion that almost everything seen in Loch Ness is an otter!

Okay, to be perfectly clear, I think Darren Naish may have missed the incredible amount of joking that goes on here at Cryptomundo among comment makers who say things like the latest Bigfoot photo from the north woods is nothing more than an “otter in an ape costume.”

As to the source of what is behind the image in the Surgeon’s Photograph, I’m, however, not afraid to say, technically, I don’t know what it is.

However, if pressed, I would have to say I don’t think it is a lake monster.

I don’t think it is a toy sub.

I don’t think it is a constructed hoax.

I consider the possibilities, in the tradition of Maurice Burton, as noted, (based on the verified animals from the loch) that it might be a water bird, a seal, an otter, or some other known species of animal, the head or neck or tail or body of the animal on the surface of Loch Ness, photographed quickly from afar, as it is swimming, diving, entering, or surfacing on the loch.

In twilight, I’ve seen common mergansers ~ called the goosander in Europe ~ (Mergus merganser) swimming in lakes in North America, which I thought would easily fool some people into thinking they were lake monsters.

Additionally, swimming red deer (Cervus elaphus) ~ especially those with new antler buds covered with velvet in the spring and early summer ~ may be responsible for some “horned loch monster” reports, but that’s not about the Surgeon’s Photo, of course.