# There soon will be no Loch Ness Monster **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 21, 2010, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-soon-will-be-no-loch-ness-monster/543995 "2010-06-21T15:59:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-soon-will-be-no-loch-ness-monster/543995/41 "2010-06-23T21:18:48Z")
By the way, I’ve been meaning to weigh in on the technical side of this. I’ve heard of people doing studies now where they take some pond water and basically sequence all of the DNA in it, discovering new species of bacteria, or at least that there were species there that hadn’t been known to be there before. I don’t know exactly how these experiments are designed, but if it were me doing it, and I found some previously unknown DNA, here’s how I’d handle it. First of all, a sequence would be flagged as “unknown” if there were no matches for it in all of the gazillions of sequences currently available at various databases. The next step (actually, this would be done at the same time) would be to find all of the closest matches - sequences that are similar, if not identical. This should, hopefully, give you some idea of (a) what kind of sequence you’re looking at - is it a protein-coding gene? A regulatory region? A chunk of repeat DNA? and (b) what sort of organism it came from. If the top ten hits are all from types of duck, odds are you have a chunk of a new species of duck’s DNA there. So let’s say you actually have some DNA that actually came from Nessie - that is, a truly previously unknown species. I’m not sure exactly how that would show up in a database search. A lot would depend on just how distantly related the organism is to its relatives in the databases, and how many mutations have occurred. As a WAG, I’d suggest that the best hits would be from its nearest relatives, possibly some reptiles and/or birds, if we’re going with Nessie being a dinosaur. If you had enough DNA, you could construct a phylogenetic tree, showing exactly how Nessie is related to other species we know about, but you’d need a pretty substantial chunk of the genome to have any confidence in the result. ---
**Author:** ![SoulFrost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f07891/32.png) [@SoulFrost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SoulFrost)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-soon-will-be-no-loch-ness-monster/543995/42 "2010-06-24T00:19:59Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > Easy. You just compare it to the DNA of its family members found in other large bodies of water around the world. > > Can they do this on land too? My family owns 600 acres on river bottom land in Louisiana that is home to the dreaded goat man (half man, half goat). Bunches of people have heard him while hunting and a few have even seen him. He must be getting old now because I don’t think there is a goat woman to make kids with. I know the general area where to look for his DNA and it should be easy to identify. Hey! We had that fellow skulking about in East Texas, too. Never heard of a Goat Woman, either. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-soon-will-be-no-loch-ness-monster/543995/43 "2010-06-24T00:43:21Z")
> [@SoulFrost](#): > > Hey! We had that fellow skulking about in East Texas, too. Never heard of a Goat Woman, either. My family’s land straddles the East Texas border in the Sabine River/Toledo Bend area. We could be talking about the same one because there can’t be more than a few of them. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-soon-will-be-no-loch-ness-monster/543995/44 "2010-06-24T01:23:41Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > That would be the unidentifiable DNA. I read a story about a bank robber that had his fingerprints removed physically. Then he was caught, because the police had a robbery and NO fingerprints were left. Therefore the guy with no fingerprints had to be guilty 😃 ---
**Author:** ![SoulFrost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f07891/32.png) [@SoulFrost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SoulFrost)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-soon-will-be-no-loch-ness-monster/543995/45 "2010-06-24T01:47:27Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > My family’s land straddles the East Texas border in the Sabine River/Toledo Bend area. We could be talking about the same one because there can’t be more than a few of them. Just a little south of you, but also butting right up against the Sabine. I don’t believe in Goat Man simply because of the huge number of drunk rednecks I’ve known who’ve armed themselves and gone looking for him. Then again, maybe those “hunting accidents” _weren’t_ accidents, at all… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-soon-will-be-no-loch-ness-monster/543995.md?page=2)