Prehistoric Animals Living in Modern Times

Giant sea monsters take scientists by surprise

Two-third of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The huge water space is still hiding numerous mysteries from people - we know about ocean a lot less than we do about space. Sea animals strike imagination with their size and power. A 15-meter squid was found on Canadian shores in April of the current year. A trailer took the giant animal to a research center. Scientists measured its tentacles and concluded that it was an absolutely new, previously unknown squid specimen.

Scientists spend millions of dollars to catch or at least to photograph giant deepwater animals. However, expensive expeditions have not brought any results yet. No scientist has seen a giant squid in the ocean. However, fishermen see huge living monsters sometimes. As a rule, their stories are perceived as tales, no one believes drunk fishermen's stories in bars.

A Canadian newspaper published a very interesting story in 1955 as told by a group of fishermen. They said that their ship had come across something strange in the sea. At first they could not understand, whether it was a dead whale or a giant jellyfish. When the ship approached the strange animal, one of the fishermen leant over the board trying to hook the animal up. As soon as the steel hook went into the jelly-like body, a huge tentacle sprang out of it. The fisherman fell down on the deck: his face turned white, he was shaking with convulsions. The fisherman had to stay in bed until the boat arrived at port. The story happened not very far from the location, where the dead body of a giant squid was found on the shore.

Modern science knows practically nothing about giant sea monsters. It is known that they live at the depth of almost 2,000 meters. There is a unique exhibit in an American museum - a squid's eye the size of a soccer ball. Fishermen found the huge eye in the stomach of a sperm-whale. Sperm-whales like eating squids most of all. Usually, they hunt for small animals weighing  four or six-kilos, swallowing a dozen of them at once. If a sperm-whale comes across a giant squid, the two titanic animals fight brutally. Scientists believe, sperm-whale usually wins the battle and eats the defeated rival.

Japanese scientists have recently conducted a curious experiment in the Pacific Ocean not far from the Mariana Trench, the deepest trench in the world. They put a container with an odorous lure on the seafloor. The container was outfitted with a video camera. The smell of the lure attracted deepwater sharks. The next minute the sharks dispersed and the Japanese scientists saw a giant monster. The huge animal was slowly swimming above the camera at the depth of 1.5 kilometers, its body was 60 meters long. Scientists still do not know what kind of  animal it was, they were only left to guess and suppose. Probably, it was a giant sleepy shark that live at the depth of the ocean - people know very little about them. No one has seen a living giant sleepy shark yet. A dead body of a shark was once washed ashore in Indonesia in 1964. Apparently, it was not a grown-up fish, because it was 26 meters long.

Another mystery can be found in Scotland, in Lake Loch Ness. Everyone has heard numerous stories and legends about Nessie – the monster that supposedly lives in the lake. No one has seen Nessie yet, but newspapers publish a lot of stories about the animal every year. Local businessmen use the mystery of nature as a profit opportunity: one can buy a lot of souvenirs in local stores. Nevertheless, there are skeptic people who still think that Nessie is simply a fable to attract people's attention. They want to see at least a dead monster - a dead body of evidence.

A group of British pilots was flying above Lake Loch Ness in 1966. One of the pilots filmed a monster swimming across the lake. Experts concluded, it was an unknown living being, probably, a living plesiosaur. Most likely, there is a group of them living in the lake – tourists disturb them at times, although mysterious animals can disturb them too. A prehistoric animal living in present times is absolutely possible. Turtles, sharks, crocodiles and other reptiles - they used to live on the same planet with dinosaurs and they still do.

Aleksey Mikhailov