Before this bit of news gets too old, I want to mention the seemingly funny media mentions last week about tourists in Scotland asking silly questions. The media had a bit of laughter over some questions from visitors, and, of course, Nessie was right up there at the top.

According to a Travel Connect article entitled “Tourists Ponder Loch Ness Monster’s Feeding Times,” the tourism agency VisitBritain compiled “some rather puzzling queries from befuddled travellers.”

As the headline to their article gives away, one inquiry they highlight dealt directly with the topic:

One such visitor was evidently unfamiliar with the discipline of Cryptozoology when asking: “What time of night does the Loch Ness monster surface and who feeds it?”.

On the face of it, perhaps this question does sound ridiculous, but why won’t people ask at least part of that question? Maybe someone with an inquiring mind would wonder if any locals knew if there has been any regular feeding behavior observed. Have sightings belied any patterns? Maybe no one is out there feeding Nessies old bread crumbs, but wondering about feeding patterns is a logical part of cryptozoology.

A cryptozoologist out there needs to download all the sightings and times of observations for the hundreds of years of sightings of unknown animate objects at Loch Ness, and do an analysis of times and what behaviors were noted. Roy Mackal’s 1976 book The Monsters of Loch Ness has two eyewitness observation charts, on pages 224 through 264, filled with detailed specifics, compiled in the pre-desktop personal computer era. Those charts cry out for comparative data analyses.

If you do it, please let me know what you discover.

Never stop asking questions.