Update: Chinese Lake Monsters
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 11th, 2007
These are images from the newest video of the six “Lake Monsters” from Tianchi Lake, China:
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Dissapointing. They could be boats. Why is this lake always shot from above and never from the shore?
Could be Birds? No trailing shadow, so Loch Ness type green scaly serpent, does not appear likely. Nothing telegraphs, MONSTER, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
With no perspective from objects on shore these creatures could be HUGE, big, seal sized, or water bugs! What we need is a shot or shots that show trees or buildings on the lake’s shore to give us some perspective to size! When I was child I used to love plopping small pebbles into the middle of a group of water beetles to see them scurry around in circles and dive under away from the pebble I’d dropped. These shots almost look like those beetles. Something, ANYTHING that would give perspective is needed to go any further with these images.
this is not much of anything to look at..just dots.. the last chinese lake monster was better
for all we know he paid 6 friends to go swimming.
Well these are better than some of the images that have been shown. The top two pictures, especially the second one, show that they seem to have long thin necks or bodies. That’s pretty un-seal-like, unless they are of the long-necked “surreal seal theory” variety. At least you can rule out some things, like giant turtles.
(This all assumes the pictures are legitimate, although they look pretty good. The lack of scale is a problem.)
The third image gives the ballgame away. I have never seen “ripple effects” like that in a large scale manner on a body of water. That is what one gets when one images rain in a puddle or pond. The amount of surface adherence as the raindrops impact will provide such type of effects. Not going to get that on a lake. The ripple effects would be substantially different, if my memory serves.
These are images of bugs in a pond.
In cryptozoology, one gets identifications from clear, up close imagery.
This is no Dinsdale film.
I don’t buy the ripple analysis – big objects make big ripples, just like big or fast moving boats make bigger wakes. It’s how water reacts to disturbance – the “ripple” from an undersea earthquake is called a tsunami.
These are stills from a videotape, so once the video footage is made available one should be able to tell how authentic the footage is. I note that it does look like the other footage, which showed less detail but were clearly of fairly big objects.
And these clearly don’t look like bugs – the top two pictures show long thin necks or bodies trailing off into the water.
The only one that might provide scale and perspective is the last one. If those variations in the water near the bottom of the picture are lake bottom features, they would give some scale if someone went back and put something with known dimensions in the water at that point. If it’s just reflections of clouds, no luck…
Umm…okay. My first reaction is that they look like birds. Let me look again………….yep, my second reaction is that they look like birds. I agree with SilverEagle, these could be birds. Inconclusive, need to see video. I’ll check back later.
Waterbugs
Is that a mountain in the background at the bottom of the last picture? Birds…?
That was my thoughts on the last image…sadly, this isn’t the conclusive proof we’re looking for.
I sure don’t see any long necks on anything here. I agree with greenmartian2007 that the third image looks nothing like what you would find on a large lake, and everything like what you would find when two small pebbles had been dropped into a small pool.
The top two photos are the most interesting to me, but I have also seen tadpoles surfacing in muddy water that look very nearly like those. The second-to-last image is also interesting, but looks like water birds swimming. Ducks and Geese often make wakes exactly like that.
Diving ducks or geese! 4th picture is the only one in focus and thin necks can be seen above the main body. So China has it’s liars/hoaxers as well.
DOH!!!! *headthroughdesk*
The fourth image is the most interesting, in my opinion. The objects have split off into pairs. This makes me think “birds.”
I don’t have a problem with the ripple action or size. Didn’t they report that the lake was super-still that day?
The video will help put it all into context.
🙁 aww I was so excited clicking the link before actually seeing the pics.
These can be literally anything.
Also, what people are seeing as long necks in the first 2 pics, looks to be just the shadowing from the trail behind the creatures. Not actually part of their bodies.
Can 6 huge beasts swim that close together anyway? Assuming these are ‘plesiosaur’-type creatures, the ‘heads and necks’ are so close together where would the huge bodies and flippers fit comfortably beneath them that close together? Maybe I am wrong, but I think big beasts like a plesiosaur would need to be swimming farther apart. Which makes it seem that these are the entire animal we are seeing and not just something’s heads (ducks, bugs,…), unless it’s small mammals.
We need people to start somehow getting closer photos of these thing… and not from the air or whatever. From the ground seeing the creatures at a side-view instead of an overhead view we’d be able to tell more of the shape of what they are.
joe levit-
You can’t the long black shape trailing behind each object to the left in the 2nd picture down? Even the shortest one is longer than a tadpole tail.
No video, no scale, no telling.
Not interested (yet).
I’m betting the video won’t help any further.
the third picture shows some kind of diving birds. ducks, comorants etc. It would be nice to see long necks and long bodies etc. but we have to be realistic. The surface pattern in almost all the pics show these to be animals of some size, duck size. The last picture is the worst, looks more like 6 chinese jets in a flyover, probably checking up on the ducks. I’d love to see a group of plesiosaurs, but before we expound on seeing things that aren’t there we otter stop and think it over.
Why are the chinese afraid of six mandarin ducks????/
If these are really a new and not previously identified species, or a case of mistaken identity, then all data is welcome. This is not entertainment (primarily).
“…we OTTER stop…”?
Hah! Love puns.
I am going to forgo any sort of discussion on the physics of ripple effects and the surface dynamics of water and just say that these photos could be just about anything. There is nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary and in my humble opinion any assumption that these could be unknown monsters rather than the hundreds of other mundane things they could represent is speculative at best, serious wishful thinking at worst. To me, these sorts of inconclusive photos need a critical eye and I am reluctant to conclude that these are anything other that vague spots without any other evidence pointing to one explanation or the other. These pics could be anything.
DUCKS!!!!!!!!!!
Ducks swimming and diving. Before I believe its a plesiosaur like animal, they’ll have to provide photos that CLEARLY show a plesiosaur like animal. Sorry, this just doesn’t cut the mustard. The last video to come out of China was much more intriguing.
This shows absolutely nothing of value.
there are fresh water lake seals in Lake Baikul in Siberia, but this is quite a distance from Tianchi Lake, plus I doubt seals are climbing to the top of a volcanic crater. Since there are only six specimens seen this is not a viable breeding population and points to the fact that these are probably just migrating birds/ducks. Cormorants are common in China and are known to be great underwater swimmers which would account for many witnesses testimony of these ‘monsters’ diving under the water and the possibility that these monsters have ‘wings’.
Look to the cormorant as your ‘monster’. Hopefully some irrational villagers don’t take it upon themselves to hunt these monsters just in case this is some unknown species.