Can Nessie See?
Posted by: Nick Redfern on September 15th, 2012
That’s the question that Lindsay Selby asks in a new post over at the Center for Fortean Zoology’s On the Track blog.
She notes:
“Interesting that these types of blind fish in different parts of the world tend to develop the same coping mechanisms to cope in their environment whether in caves or murky pools. This is called convergent evolution, where different creatures dealing with the same or similar ecological problems end up with similar evolutionary solutions. Could this apply to Lake Creatures I wonder as many seem to be reported in similar types of lakes formed doing the ice age with similar characteristics. Could they have developed along similar lines to cope with the changes over the years?”
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No.
While at first thought, the idea that Nessie may be blind due to the dark water, peat, etc. may make sense on some level, it still doesn’t hold water. 🙂
Giant squids, which live way down in the depths have huge eyes. While I think the environment of Loch Ness would impede normal vision, Nessie may not rely entirely on vision to scope out food. There’s all manner of possibilities which we could discuss here– It has shown surprisingly good sense of hearing in past sightings too. While vision may not be a favored sense for hunting and maneuvering, I don’t think it’s blind.
Again, witnesses have seen its eyes in past sightings.
Glad you cleared that up, Poe. Succinctly, even.
How many points are there on Rudolph’s antlers?
It would first need to be established that the Loch Ness Monster is real before it would make sense to ask if it can see.
Hence, the investigation of Loch Ness…if you haven’t read through the sightings and the information available, then I wouldn’t expect you to consider there’s something there–but then it begs the question as to why you’re bothering to comment on threads related to it in the first place if you’re not interested.
As for the theorizing, that’s how science works–you make hypothesis about situations and phenomenon and then ask lots and lots of questions trying to pare down the variables and make sense of the data until you get answers.