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April Fool's Day Database
April Fool's Day Database
The April Fool's Day Database is a catalog of April 1st hoaxes throughout history, categorized by theme and year.
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The Body of Nessie Found (1972)
On the day before April Fool's Day, a team of British zoologists from the Flamingo Park Zoo found a mysterious carcass floating in Loch Ness. Initial reports claimed it weighed a ton and a half and was 15 ½ feet long. The Associated Press offered this account of the discovery:On Friday morning, the eight-man team from the Flamingo Park Zoo was having breakfast at a hotel beside Loch Ness, legendary home of the monster, about nine miles from Inverness. The team had been cooperating with the Loch Ness Phenomena Bureau in searching for proof that the monster really exists.
At 9 a.m. passers-by called the team's attention to a body floating about 300 yards offshore. The scientists put out in a boat.
They came back dragging with them a creature which was variously described by witnesses as anything between 12 and 18 feet in length and weighing up to 1 1/2 tons. Some described it as having a bear's head and brown scaly body with clawlike fins. Others said it had a green body without scales and was more like a cross between a walrus and a seal.
At 9 a.m. passers-by called the team's attention to a body floating about 300 yards offshore. The scientists put out in a boat.
They came back dragging with them a creature which was variously described by witnesses as anything between 12 and 18 feet in length and weighing up to 1 1/2 tons. Some described it as having a bear's head and brown scaly body with clawlike fins. Others said it had a green body without scales and was more like a cross between a walrus and a seal.
The zoologists placed the body in a van and began to transport it to the Flamingo Park Zoo. However, the police chased down the truck and stopped it under a 1933 act of Parliament prohibiting the removal of "unidentified creatures" from Loch Ness. The body was then taken to nearby Dunfermline for examination.
The discovery of the carcass received worldwide media attention. The British press dubbed it "Son of Nessie." But upon examination, Edinburgh scientists identified it as a bull elephant seal from the South Atlantic.
The next day John Shields, Flamingo Park's education officer, confessed he had been responsible for the body. The bull elephant seal had died the week before at Dudley Zoo. He had shaved off its whiskers, padded its cheeks with stones, and kept it frozen for a week, before dumping it in the Loch and then phoning in a tip to make sure his colleagues found it. He had meant to prank his colleagues who were searching for Nessie, but admitted the joke got out of hand when the police chased down their van. [The Modesto Bee, Apr 2, 1972.]
Categories: Animals, Loch Ness Monster, Science, Freelance Pranksters, United Kingdom, Scotland, 1972, In The Wild.