Looks can be deceiving!
A research teach from Japan was at Loch Ness this week, in the Scottish Highlands, to prove a point.
Why?
Because the team believed that the Loch Ness monster, the silhouette-famous giant that dwells beneath the surface of the deep freshwater lake, is not only not a monster but is in fact a genius.
“I don’t use that word lightly,” said Teruko Akasaki. “We spent years observing the lake and trying to get a look at Nessie, like everyone else. The first clue was how evasive the creature was. That takes brains.”
“But the evasive action was only the beginning,” said Katsuko Osumi. “Then we started to notice patterns on the surface of the water that seemed like they were messages.”
“They were,” said Akira Sasai. “And not just any messages. These were fairly arcane reinterpretations of and corrections to the work of Carl Gauss.”
ON THE SHORE
The trio set up on the shore with a bucket of fish; a stack of books about Fermat, Godel, Ramanujan, and others; and a subsonic beacon. Then they waited.
“The sound of the beacon when activated could not be detected by us but was noticed at once by the creature, which we in turn noticed as a result of a swell on the surface of the lake,” said Akasaki. “A moment later, the crown of its head appeared.”
“I nudged the bucket of fish toward the water,” said Osumi. “The stench was strong, which was a disincentive for me but should have alerted the creature to their presence.”
Nessie surprised the team.
“She ate the books,” said Sasai.
HAPPENED AGAIN
The next day the team performed a similar experiment, and the monser ate the collected works of Thomas Mann instead of a chocolate cake. And the third day, it devoured a monograph on Giacometti, a dictionary, and a Dummy’s Guide to Wi-Fi instead of a liverwurst sandwich. “That third day is, for me, a bad experiment,” said Akasaki. “Who likes liverwurst?”
It wasn’t just dietary habits, either. In the hours after the creature appeared, the three scientists stood at water’s edge discussing the contents of the books that had just been eaten. When they incorrectly represented or interpreted them, a series of air bubbles appeared at the surface. The creature had absorbed the contents of the books by swallowing them, apparently instantly.
“It was like having a critic on-hand,” said Akasaki.
“Though in fairness some of the things we said about Wi-Fi accurately reflect the contents of the book but are no longer the case,” said Osumi. “It is difficult to know how the additional information was collected.”
FREQUENT FLIERS
The team will now fly to Canada by way of Pakistan and then from Montreal to Munich to present a paper at the London To Lagos symposium.
Loch Ness Monster is in Scotland, not England.