Depending on one's point of view, Loch Ness is ideal for creating optical illusions, or for concealing a ferocious beast. Located in the Scottish Highlands, it's two miles wide and 24 miles long. It's at least 925 feet deep in places. Peat from local bogs seeps into the water, making it so dark, visibility is only a few feet. The surface of the black water reflects like a mirror. The surrounding mountains create a tunnel effect that helps the wind whip up powerful waves that cast stranges shadows. On calm days, a mist covers the lake. A glacier carved out Loch Ness about 10,000 years ago, creating the largest body of water in Great Britain. It was once part of the North Sea but was cut off when the surrounding land rose after the ice age. Loch Ness is the most famous of many deep lakes in Scotland and around the world that are said to be inhabited by monsters. Others include Loch Morar and Loch Tay in Scotland, Lake Storsjon in Sweden, Lake Okanagan in Canada and Lake Champlain in the United States. Some believers in the Loch Ness monster have theorized that a herd of dinosaurs or other prehistoric animals were caught in the lake, protected from what killed off the others of their kind, and continue to live and breed. Others speculate it's really a large sea cow, turtle, eel or other animal. But no known mammal, amphibian, reptile or fish fits the description. Still, scientists to this day occasionally discover a species of animal that has never been heard of before. And that, say the faithful, could be what's going on in Loch Ness.
