Something that looks very much like a giant snake -- or worm -- is slithering its way out of Iceland and causing viral speculation around the Internet.
Lake Lagarfljot -- 25 miles long and 367 feet deep in eastern Iceland
Something that looks very much like a giant snake -- or worm -- is slithering its way out of Iceland and causing viral speculation around the Internet.
Lake Lagarfljot -- 25 miles long and 367 feet deep in eastern Iceland -- has been called home to a local legendary beast called Lagarfljotsormurinn, that country's version of Scotland's Loch Ness Monster.
On Feb. 2, Hjortur Kjerulf captured something on video that, at first glance, appears very snakelike (or wormlike, if you will) swimming in the cold water of the Icelandic lake.
Watch the video here:
The alleged beast is a little different from reports of Scotland's Nessie, which supposedly has a large, dinosaur-like body, with fins, a long neck and tail and a head resembling a horse.
"What concerns me the most is the robotic look of this creature," said Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Coleman has researched and written about the Icelandic creature in his book "Field Guide to Lake Monsters and Sea Serpents," co-authored with Patrick Huyghe.
The most recent sighting of an unusual creature in Lake Lagarfljot, according to Coleman, took place in 1998, when a classroom of students and their teacher claimed to see one close to shore. But it wasn't a snake or worm.
"This Icelandic lake monster, which dates back to 1345, has been described as a pale, humped animal, about 50 feet long, sprouting whiskers on the head at the end of a 6-foot-long neck," Coleman told The Huffington Post.
Coleman is dubious of the Icelandic beasty video.
"If you look at that head, it appears like somebody's put a constructed anaconda head there, and behind it, the natural movement of a snake should give a much more flowing curve to the sections," Coleman said.
"What concerned me immediately was when I saw the tail section moving in unison with the next section; there's no movement in that one section as it goes side-to-side. A snake moves in a sort of's' curve. But in this video, you get a blocking of the movement of the creature, which tells us it's probably very artificial."
According to Iceland Review Online, some skeptics say this "creature" is nothing more than a torn fishing net that froze in the river.
On his Cryptomundo site, Coleman speculates this alleged beast or beast of a hoax might have been accomplished by the use of "a robot with tarps, fish nets or trash bags (a favorite for watery hoaxers)."
Here are some other water and not-so wet beasties:
A view of the Loch Ness Monster, near Inverness, Scotland, on April 19, 1934. The photograph, one of two pictures known as the "surgeon's photographs," was allegedly taken by Col. Robert Kenneth Wilson, though it was later exposed as a hoax by one of t