Sunday 21 January 2024

Mongolian Lake Monsters

 

Mongolian Lake creatures

Several lakes are said to have lake monsters dwelling in them in Mongolian.

Lake Hovsgol

Thought  to be between  two to five million years old, Lake Hovsgol in is northern Mongolia is the home of a large creature..It is Mongolia’s largest freshwater lake, with depths of over 800 feet. The lake  drains via the Egiyn River, which feeds the Selenge River in the Lake Baikal drainage basin.

Lake Baikal has its own monster.See link below.

https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2021/03/mysterious-lake-baikal.html

South of the lake lies the Hövsgöl Mountain Range. In October 2007  a report appeared in some Chinese newspapers. Diver Dave Woodward and sonar operator Gregg Mikolasek were  boating on Lake Hovsgol when they saw  a giant 'trace', or shape, suspended about 35 metres below the surface in the freshwater lake..

'I think we saw something and I think it was about six metres long,' Woodward recalls telling his diving buddies back at the camp later that afternoon. About three metres wide in the middle, whatever was down there exhibited the half-moon shape typical of the image of a fish on sonar. Its thick central section glowed red, indicating density, another pointer that whatever it was, it was probably a single entity and not a school of fish. Woodward thought about going in, hesitated, then decided not to.

(I cannot show the link to the newspaper articles as it contains a virus.)

It sounds typical of a lake creature description . I was unable  to access other reports.

Could the creature be the same one as in Lake Baikal perhaps travelling from one lake to another.

 

Lake Uureg.

 

The Lake is a saline lake in western Mongolia. It has a maximum depth of 42 m (138 ft).

A Mongolian traveller  saw a huge creature, which he captured on video whilst he was taking a trip around Uureg Lake .Traveller Mr S. Sodnomdorj said “Foremost I thought there was a timber floating on the lake. Then I asked from a local man who was joining with me if it was possible or not. The local said ‘It is not possible’. We were in the distance of 250 meters away from the object. After that I tried to see that thing carefully, and then it seemed like an animal. I switched on my camera and started to record. I was running to the lake while recording because it was too far to capture it. That animal began to move its body and turned to the centre of the lake. Finally I realized it was an animal”.The creature’s fin appeared on the surface of the lake and it was approximately 7-8 meters.

Local people tell of a myth about a giant creature in the Uureg Lake. They call the giant creature  “Khukh bukh” (Blue bull).It is said to moo like a bull and appear once in 60 years. Elderly people used to say “I will give you to ‘blue bull’, if you behave naughtily” to children. They also used to warn people not to swim in the lake.

Mr. Sodnomdorj who captured the creature wants to have the video analysed  to prove if it is a creature or not.

As it is a salt water lake it could be  a sea creature that somehow entered the lake.

Near by is another lake with a creature. Uureg Lake lies a 150 kilometers from the Khyargas Lake.

Khyargas Lake.

This is also a salt water lake and is 50 metres( 150 metres approx) in depth

There was news released about Russian researchers working on a mysterious trace that was on the lake shore. A group of Mongolian and Russian geological researchers  team led by Victor Yarmoluk, discovered a huge trace on the shore of the Khyargas lake in the 1980’s. (Voice of Russia Aug 31, 2013).

The researchers  discovered several newly made footprints on the shore  1.5 km ( 5 feet approx) from the lake. It seemed like many reptiles came out and were lying on the shore for some time.

Writer and public figure Igor Grishin and a team visited Khyargas Lake in 2013 for a second time. They visited the lake first time in 2010.

“We found different sizes of traces and also bones which are cannot belong to the animals in Mongolia. However fishes that bitten by big teeth were caught from the lake many times, but there is only a species called ‘toothless Osman of Altai’ exists in the lake as known. We afforded the observation of the footprints on the ground and bed of the lake with echometer. Those footprints can be divided into 3 groups. There can be different sizes of several animals or those footprints can be traces from different parts of one animal.”

Researchers found out that some prehistoric animals such as plesiosaurs were not able to digest its food unless to swallow stones.

Valery Nikolayev is a zoologist and scientist of Valdai protected area. He stated that he agrees the prediction on existence of the prehistoric giant reptiles The Uureg Lake belongs to the same region of geography. It raises the assumption of existence of the similar giant creatures in both lakes or travelling from one lake to another.

Lake Kanas

Kanas Lake means 'a gorgeous and mysterious lake' in Mongolian. Local legend has it that there is a huge 'lake monster' in the lake, which often drags horses drinking by the lake into the water.

Read more here:

https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2009/07/kanas-lake-monster-china.html

Lake Khaiyr

 Its depth is yet unknown. It is called "Khaiyr" (meaning "to love" in modern Mongolian) 

In1940 there was a sighting of "two large black creatures" by the polar aviator, Ivan Cherevichny and a  polar helmsman Valentin Ivanovych Akkuratov . They  saw two large animals when flying over the lake at the height of 800–1000 metres. Getting curious, they got down to 50 metres and observed the animals, but the noise of the plane scared the creatures and they submerged.

In 1964 when a group of scientists from Moscow University, claim to have encountered an animal with prehistoric biology whilst on an expedition surveying mineral deposits.An article written in Komsomolskaya Pravda by G. Rokosuev explains that the "monster" was initially seen by N. Gladkikh, the deputy leader of the expedition team.Gladkikh went out to the lake to draw water and saw a creature that had crawled out onto the shore, apparently to eat the grass - a small head on a long gleaming neck , a huge body covered with jet-black skin and a vertical fin along the spine.Gladikikh's story was at first met with incredulity by the rest of the team. However, the creature then reappeared to be seen by the leader of the expedition and several other members.

Rokosuev wrote:

“Suddenly a head appeared in the lake, then a dorsal fin. The creature beat the water with its long tail, producing waves on the lake. You can imagine when we saw with our own eyes that the stories were true”

The descriptions sound like a  a plesiosaur, which became extinct  66 million years ago. Some researchers think that this creature represents a mammalian herbivore related to the hippopotamus. Due to the isolation of this northern lake,a unique adaptation could arise.

The 1964 story has since been reported as a hoax however the 1940 sighting has not been debunked.

Being so isolated it needs an expedition of neutral scientists to get to the truth.

It seems Scotland is not the only country with  lots of lake monsters or water kelpies .Interestingly  both are in the northern hemisphere.