More WaterMoose And Other Water Monsters

Below, moosehead trophy at men's quarters of the school at Kinneeeburn, Scotland, where it is a tradition for students to attempt to steal the moosehead from one another. This is traditional at several Scottish Universities including at Edinburgh: in several instances (such as the one illustrated) nobody seems to remember where the moosehead came originally.

Copperplate engraving of a European elk (Moose) as an illustration in a Scottish child's schoolbook during the 1830s

                             The Moose as Water-Horse

"Cadborosaurus" animated gif (Blogger seems to have taken the animation out of it), showing mooselike head conformation, developing antlers, drooping ears and the "Beard" or bell at the throat-all of which are characteristics of a moose. Moose can also swim out to sea for miles and might still be the origins for some "Merhorse" reports off Scandinavia, off China, Off The Eastern Coast of North America and also the Northwest Coasts area.

[Stock photo of a moose for comparison]

"Two Heads" Ogopogo




[Cow and Calf Moose Swimming up close]

Lake Opeongo (Algonquin Park, Ottowa, near Muskrat Lake) "Monster" recognised as a swimming moose by photographer.

Muskrat Lake "Mussie" statue, based on reports of swimming moose (note the antlers) Compare to the statue "Ogopogo" below [in two views, looks like two different paint jobs.

Recent Blurry video of Champ the Monster of Lake Champlain: this has plausibly been interpreted as a swimming moose and the unusual round shape of the head due to the palmate moose antlers. The size of the body is exaggerated by thge ripples around it, which make the part emerged out of the water look much larger than it actually is. The first sighting that I had heard about as coming from Lake Champlain, in the 1930s, was an obvious swimming moose report with obvious moose antlers and large drooping ears.


Memphre (Memphremagog Lake Monster) and Champ of Lake Champlain seem to be Lake monsters more legitimately described as being like the Loch Ness Monster Sketches of body conformations as seen in the water can be a very good match.





"Champ" as Merhorse, with obvious long neck and two large humps including serrated ridge. the Icelandic "Skrimsl" as illustrated in Costello's In search of Lake Monsters could have been a very poor attempt to convey a similar sort of sighting.

[Two local depictions of Champ of Lake Champlain]

CFZ REPOST: Tuesday, January 26, 2010
DALE DRINNON: Champ sightings Mock-up

I was going through Lake Champlain sightings recently and I decided to do this little demonstration of what the common physical characteristics and size ascribed to Champ are actually supposed to be. This subtracts obvious sightings of fish and swimming moose, and the occasional stray seal.


I make no remarks about what this means at this point; this mock-up is merely to demonstrate what one series of witnesses are describing with a fair degree of consistency. Sightings like this have been recorded for the whole length of the 20th century.

1 comments:
Dale Drinnon said...
BTW, this is meant as a two-part demonstration: I wanted this part established before bringing in Paul Le Blonde's analysis of The Mansi photo of "Champ" again. Theses sightings were made for a long time before the photo was published.

It is incidentally a Sinclair Oil Company logo dinosaur: several of the reports specify the resemblance.

3:44 AM

"Two-humped" sighting photographed on Lake Champlain by Olsen in the 1980s. It is very similar in profile to a harbour (Common) seal swimming at the surface. Seals and sea lions are even reported around Lake Okanagan, where they presumably had been dumped by human agency.




Big-Fish Ogopogo, probably a sturgeon if the photo is legitimate.

Lake Manitoba's Manipogo, sighting with odd pattern indicated on sides: probably based on large sturgeon with widely-spaced (but regularly spaced) scutes along the sides. The pattern incidetnally is NOT like the usual smaller sturgeons but is instead like the giant Sturgeons of Siberia, Like the Lake Baikhal monster shown below is supposed to be.





Below is an amended Lake Monster map from one of the Cryptozoology Information sites. Within the dark blue line including Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia and Canada, the majority of sightings appear to be "Water Horse" reports based largely on sightings of swimming moose.