Last week Japanese scientists explaced... placed explosive detonators at the bottom of Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessy out of the water. Segord Godfree of the Nessy Aliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existance of our underwater ally.

I wonder how much time and money that has been spent on looking for Nessie over the years. Probably enough to wipe out the debt of Africa.

Anything that starts off with "I’m a college student in the Midwest U.S." can be immediately dismissed as bullshit. Sounds like the first line in a lot of spam I get.

Otherwise, the entire concept a prehistoric sea monster leaving in Scotland since the Messasoic Era and only just now leaving a tooth in a deer carcass is completely plausable.



... Oh yeah!

Drain the lake and find out. Don't worry, it's Scotland. The rain will fill it right back up in no time.

Anyone else find it odd that we have better knowledge about the surface of most other planets in our solar system than we do about this one fucking lake on Earth?

I've never thought of it that way... but yeah.

Ehh...I think they've done enough sonar readings of Loch Ness to have a pretty good idea of what the bottom of the lake looks like. But to the Lock Ness Monster believers this proves nothing, because the monster obviously lives in the water, not on the lake bottom.

I found it most hysterical that, with all the people searching for the Loch Ness Monster for all these years, some college kid just stopped by the lake and happened to stumble across a tooth.

i'd be interested to know that the tooth did come from though... or is it just a complete fabrication... do any animal experts here care to shed some light?

Maybe it's from a Scottish Sasquatch.

Seriously, is there a more scrutinized body of water on the face of the earth? I think if something was there we'd have a little bit of decent evidence at this point.

I refuse to refer to the Loch ness Monster as Nessie. I don't think a monster would like a cutesy name like that.

I'm not so sure about that...my high school football career ended when I got flattened by a middle linebacker nicknamed "Nessie". He was the biggest, meanest motherfucker ever. The Loch Ness Monster would be proud to share a nickname with that bastard.

It was about that time that I realized this was a crustacean from the paleolithic era who looked at me and said....


I'm gonna need about tree-fiddy!

What does "Raustraut" mean? It's not as funny with the caption being just "No wonder he is not [something]!"

just to show you not all animals thought to be extinct, are

Ivory-billed woodpecker not extinct
Scientists report sightings of bird in Arkansas, release video

Monday, May 2, 2005 Posted: 1:07 PM EDT (1707 GMT)

There had been no confirmed sightings of the endangered ivory-billed woodpecker in 60 years.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An ivory-billed woodpecker -- widely believed to be extinct and whose last confirmed sighting was 60 years ago -- is alive in Arkansas, according to a research paper released Thursday.

And there are plans to use federal money to preserve the bird's habitat.

Evidence the woodpecker still exists includes eight independent sightings between 2004 and 2005 and a videotape.

"The bird captured on video is clearly an ivory-billed woodpecker. Amazingly, America may have another chance to protect the future of this spectacular bird and the awesome forests in which it lives," said a statement from John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, The Associated Press reported.

Fitzpatrick co-wrote a paper about the discovery that was released Thursday in the online version of Science magazine.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton called the find an "exciting opportunity," the AP reported.

"Second chances to save wildlife once thought to be extinct are rare .. we will take advantage of this opportunity," she said at a news conference.

The AP reported that Norton and Agriculture Secretary Mikle Johanns promised federal assistance to protect the ivory-bill.

The paper's authors said that observers heard drumming sounds that are consistent with those made by the bird.

Searchers have been unable to spot the bird outside a three-kilometer area of the Big Woods region of Arkansas, but the paper's authors note the area is prime to support a few breeding pairs.

As a result of the sightings, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Nature Conservancy and other groups have joined to form the Big Woods Conservation Partnership to conserve 200,000 acres of forest habitat and rivers in the area during the next 10 years.

The last confirmed U.S. sighting of the the bird was in a Louisiana hardwood forest in the 1940s. The bird is second in size to the endangered imperial woodpecker of Mexico, once the largest woodpecker on Earth.

Ivory-billed woodpeckers have wingspan of 30 to 31 inches and are almost 20 inches long -- about the size of an American black crow.

They once spread across bottomland hardwoods and mountain pine forests of the southeastern United States and Cuba.

The birds, which require a large area for feeding, maintained a small, healthy community until the late 1800s.

Logging and hunting caused the birds' severe decline to near-extinction, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The birds lived primarily in mature deciduous forest swamps in the southeastern United States, Cornell Lab's Web site states. It takes about three square miles of mature forest to sustain a breeding pair of ivory-bills.

By 1938, about 22 birds remained.

But reported sightings -- in Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana -- spawned searches. Many of those sightings turned out to be of the more common, slightly smaller and more widespread pileated woodpecker.

The ivory-bill differs from the pileated in size, bill color, the female's all-black crest and large patches of white on the lower back of the perched bird. When perched, the pileated appears solid black on the back.

In 1999, a Louisiana State University student David Kullivan said he saw a pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers in a remote bayou.

"That morning, I was sitting at the base of a tree," Kullivan told Audubon magazine. "Suddenly, these two birds were in the trees. I watched them for 15 minutes.

"The male -- the bird with a red crest -- seemed to be doing all the calling. I was awfully excited when they flew away. I tried to follow them, but they were gone."

Cornell and Zeiss Optics sponsored a search of the area beginning in 2002, but they did not find any clear evidence of the bird.

Mary Scott, avid birder and operator of the Web site BirdingAmerica.com, says she saw the ivory-bill in Arkansas in 2003, but did not announce it until April 27, 2005. Scott said she saw the bird while taking a break and without her camera.

Gene Sparling reported seeing the bird while he was kayaking in early 2004 in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Monroe County, Arkansas.

Bobby Harrison of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, and Tim Gallagher of Cornell, who was writing a book about the bird, asked Sparling to lead them to the site where he saw it.

Two weeks after Sparling's sighting, Gallagher and Harrison saw the bird, too.

Five more sightings -- all by experienced observers -- came between April 5, 2004, and February 15, 2005.

But the key evidence is an April 25, 2004, video that David Luneau shot. It shows a large woodpecker perched on a tree and flying away as his canoe approaches.

"Its images are blurred and pixilated owing to rapid motion, slow shutter speed, video interlacing artifacts, and the bird's distance beyond the video camera's focal plane," the paper says of the video.

"Despite these imperfections, crucial fieldmarks are evident both on the original and on deinterlaced and magnified video fields."

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not to mention this guy that there have been reports in aussie that they are indeed still around

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so anything is possible i suppose

I don't know ... it stumped Babel Fish.

So, because a woodpecker that we thought we had killed off actually survived ... Nessie must be real?

"austraut" means out-dare or something, so maybe it means something like "no wonder it does not dare show itself" or some variation? Would make sense...