CRYPTOLINK: Comparisons Between "Sea Serpents" and Mammal Anatomy

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting, usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.

 

 painting by Thomas Finley, based off of a sighting of an alleged unknown animal in Loch Ness.
This alleged animal's pinnae (ears) and mane of hair support the theory that such unknown vertebrates are mammalian in identity
(if they exist).

I have recently been working on creating comparative images between photographs or eyewitness drawings which are allegedly of the unknown aquatic animals known as "sea serpents" and anatomy of known animal species. While some people may feel that this is a waste of time or is subject to error, I think that making such comparisons may help us gain a better idea of what these animals are and thus may possibly allow us to eventually be able to predict where their likely habitats and behaviors would be. I had originally posted these comparative images to the Bizarre Zoology Facebook page, but I thought that it may be beneficial to viewers if I shared them here. The reports of long-necked unknown animals which suggest that these animals have body hair, whiskers, horn-like structures or pinnae (ears), dorsal humps, wide mouths, an undulating swimming motion, toleration of cold water, neck flexibility in the vertical plane, and toleration of changes in environmental salinity relating to fresh or salt water indicate to me that these animals are mammals, and I have thus chosen to compare the photographs of these alleged unknown long-necked animals in this article to mammal anatomy. I specifically compared this data to anatomy of sea lions, as reports and evidence suggests that these animals are most likely long-necked pinnipeds which are of the family Otariidae. However, I have also included a comparison with a drawing depicting a short necked "sea serpent" and have found it to also be similar to the anatomy of a species of marine mammal (Basilosaurus cetoides).

Read on...