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Overview and Evidence[]
The Ogopogo is a serpentine creature reported to inhabit Okanagan Lake, an 84-mile-long freshwater lake located in British Columbia, Canada. Much like its European cousin Nessie, this creature has since become a pop culture icon, although not to the same extent as the Loch Ness monster. Although generally known as a modern day phenomenon, Ogopogo sightings have been reported for hundreds of years in the oral traditions of various First Nations tribes, which oftentimes depicted the creature with a malevolent yet protective disposition. According to historians, the creature's name reportedly originates with the 1924 song "The Ogo-Pogo: The Funny Fox-Trot" by Mark Strong and Cumberland Clark.
While the Loch Ness monster is decidedly more plesiosaur-like in form, the Ogopogo has generally been described as a more serpentine beast reminiscent of classic tales of sea serpents. Like many cryptids, specific details vary, but the general consensus holds that Ogopogo is a long reptilian creature stretching nearly 20 meters in length and weighing several tons. Coloration varies between sightings, but green, black, and brown are the most commonly cited schemes. Like Nessie, the Ogopogo is said to have a row of humps running down its back, although this could also be an illusion caused by a hypothetical vertically undulating swimming pattern. The beast's head is often described as horse or sheep-like, sometimes with horns. As stated previously, older legends of the creature give it an ill-tempered, often demonic disposition with many of them going so far as to feature tribesmen routinely sacrificing livestock to the creature in an attempt to pacify it.[1]
While there are several alleged photographs and video recording of the creature, nearly all of them are inconclusive and impossible to effectively analyze. For example, one cell phone recording allegedly taken of the creature in 2011 by Okanagan man Richard Huls was eventually revealed to be a group of floating logs.[2] The scientific community has generally regarded the creature as a local legend and no more. While the plesiosaurs Nessie is said to resemble were at least real animals at some point, the 60-foot, multi-humped, horned snake the Ogopogo is said to be doesn't resemble any animal in the fossil record and seemingly violates the basic rules of vertebrate taxonomy. Skeptics like Benjamin Radford have suggested that the Ogopogo is simply the result of misidentifying known wildlife with the main suspects being beavers, river otters, and waterfowl. These animals, while relatively small, could be made to seem larger than they are if they were viewed from a distance and left large wakes behind them.
Alleged Sightings[]
Third-Person Accounts[]
In 1968, one Arthur Folden was driving on Highway 97 alongside Okanagan Lake when he noticed a strange shape moving in the water. Pulling off to the side of the road, Folden began filming the 'creature', which appeared to be rather large due to the wake it left behind it and be about 300 yards from the shoreline.
In 2005, skeptics Benjamin Radford, John Kirk, and Joe Nickell performed an experiment for the National Geographic docuseries Is It Real? where they attempted to recreate the sighting. The trio concluded that Folden likely did see a real creature but simply misjudged its size and distance and likely saw nothing more than a beaver.[3]Sources[]
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