Is Nessy and Elephant?

MSNBC - Was Loch Ness monster actually an elephant?
Apparently that's the newest theory floating about.

Neil Clark, curator of paleontology at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, sees striking similarities between descriptions of Nessie and what an Indian elephant looks like while swimming. And perhaps not coincidentally a traveling circus featuring elephants passed by the misty lake in the 1930s at the height of the monster sightings.

I can see the resemblance between the two, and the some of his arguments sound reasonible.

Clark noted that in 1933, impresario Bertram Mills promised anyone who could capture the monster for his circus a 20,000-pound reward, which Clark reckoned would be equivalent to nearly $1.8 million today. Perhaps Mills dared offer such a huge sum because he knew it would never be claimed, Clark speculated.

Others argue:

"Ah! Bloody dismissive, that's what people are," said George Edwards, skipper of the Nessie Hunter, a tour boat on Loch Ness.

Reached by phone, Edwards said he didn't think much of the pachyderm hypothesis. For one thing, he said, "How does it account for more recent sightings? Yes, it's possible -- you can never say never, but I think its very, very unlikely."

It seems quite possible to me that the 1930s sightings could have been elephant enduced. The ancient sightings could have been anything, but once the idea is placed into people's heads that there is a monster in the lake, anything can and will look like a monster to the person who wants to see one. An elephant is as good as anything else.