In May 2022, someone photographed an unknown creature in the Kanas Lake scenic area, and as can be seen from the video, a huge black shadow churning up the turbulent waves in the lake, and the legend of Kanas Lake having "lake monsters" is remembered by the world again.
Located in the primeval forests of the Altai Mountains in Xinjiang on the mainland, Kanas Lake has been developed as a nature reserve, shrouded in mountains and mountains, with pleasant natural scenery and beautiful scenery, like a "paradise".
However, it is in this isolated lake that there is a terrible rumor - there are huge lake monsters inhabiting the lake, and the lake monsters are extremely fierce, often devouring the horses, cattle and sheep of local herders.
There are many legends about the infestation of "lake monsters" in Kanas Lake, and the haunting of "lake monsters" casts a mysterious veil over Kanas Lake, and the "beautiful and mysterious lake" lives up to its name.
"Lake monsters" appear in Kanas Lake
According to local legends, a long time ago there was a herder herding horses by Kanas Lake, the weather was clear, the sun was gentle, the breeze was blowing, it was very comfortable, the horses freely graze and drink water by the lake, and the wrangler lay on the grass and slowly fell asleep.
When the wrangler woke up and found that the dozen horses he had brought had disappeared, he looked for horses along the lake, and was horrified to see that the water by the lake was dyed a blood-red, and there was a mess of horse hoof prints on the shore, as if the horses had been eaten by some murderous animal, and the wrangler quickly ran home.
When the wrangler returned home, he witnessed the scene by the lake, and he had a nightmare about the "lake monster" one night, and the next day, he talked to the herders in the village, who echoed and said that they had experienced something similar.
Such rumors still exist today, and it is said that there are lake monsters in Kanas Lake, which are huge and haunted, often devouring animals that move around the lake, and the horses, cows, and sheep in the village have mysteriously disappeared by the lake.
The earliest sightings came from a ranger who said he saw a huge red creature about 15 meters long on the surface of Kanas Lake, and some herders also reported seeing something like the dorsal fin of a fish in the middle of the lake.
One of the first experts to pay attention to the Kanas monster, Professor Huang Renxin of the Department of Biology of Xinjiang University, believes that the so-called "lake monster" should be a very large fish.
Yuan Guoying, an expert at the Xinjiang Environmental Protection Research Institute, suspects that the "lake monster" may be some kind of ancient relic species, or it may have survived a long migration in Kanas Lake.
In 1980, the Kanas Comprehensive Expedition was established, and in the process of investigating lake monsters, the expedition team successively discovered some rare biological species, including Altay forest frogs, viviparous lizards, albino bears and other creatures.
The expedition team arranged a large net of hundreds of meters on the surface of the lake, in an attempt to catch the unknown creatures in the lake and peek into their true appearance, but after only one night, the large net disappeared completely, and three days later, two kilometers upstream from the site of the net, someone found the large net, which had become dilapidated, torn open a large hole, and one end was dragged into the bottom of the lake.
It can be seen that the "lake monster" is not only huge and amazing, but also very alert and not easy to catch.
The investigation of the lake monster progressed in 1985, when Kanas planned to establish a nature reserve, but the legend of the lake monster has always puzzled tourists and local residents, and fishermen working on the lake remind each other to "watch out for what is in the lake."
So the expedition team traveled again, and one morning, a huge wave appeared on the originally calm lake, and Professor Xiang Lichen, as the commander-in-chief, saw a giant red fish with a body length of about 10 meters.
Observing the lake surface from the fish viewing pavilion on the top of the mountain on the west side of Kanas Lake, the team found dozens of large and small reddish-brown spots, which can be seen with telescopes, these dots are fish heads, and the eyes and mouth of fish are very large, Yuan Guoying excitedly recorded this scene with a camera.
Analyzing some of the fish that can be seen in the picture, this fish is 10 to 15 meters long and weighs about 2 to 3 tons.
In order to attract the behemoths in the lake, the expedition team used an oversized hook to hang a large leg of lamb as bait, and used a 2.8-meter log made of floating fish "lake monsters", after a while, the team saw a fish swimming under the surface, a large fish swam by the float, without hooking, the fish body is about three times the length of the float, that is, the body length of this big fish is almost 9 meters.
The expedition team thought that this big red fish was most likely a gero salmon, but it was not successfully caught at that time, so the life in the lake was inconclusive.
The legend of the "lake monster" has existed since the time of Genghis Khan, and the Tuvans, descendants of Genghis Khan, said that the "lake monster" existed to protect the remains of Genghis Khan who sank to the bottom of the lake.
The ancestors of the Tuvans tried to capture the lake monster twice, the first time they specially made a huge fish hook, using the head of the ox as bait, cowhide as a rope, and 20 horses to pull a rope, after the lake monster was hooked, they rushed the horse to pull the lake monster ashore, but the 20 horses were so tired that they foamed at the mouth, and the lake monster was not pulled up, so they tied the rope to the tree, and the rope broke.
The second time, the Tuvans slaughtered more than a dozen cattle, made large nets out of tough cowhides, and dragged large nets with five boats to hunt lake monsters, but the boat sank and broke the net, which ended in failure.
Although the Tuvan hunt for lake monsters is a legend, it is the same as the experience of the 1980 expedition, which shows the size and power of the "lake monster".
In 2001, a photographer went to the Kanas Lake to collect wind, suddenly a person shouted, the photographer looked back, only had time to see the huge head protruding from the lake, according to one photographer description: "Like a dog's head, with a tail showing out of the water, it is definitely not a fish head." ”
This unknown creature was suspected to be the legendary "lake monster", but unfortunately, no one had the opportunity to take pictures of the "lake monster" at that time, and the photographer who saw the lake monster later insisted that what he saw was "definitely not a fish head".
This statement of "doghead fish" may be an accident, and there are more statements about the unknown creatures in the lake as "big red fish".
A local old man said that when he was young, he had seen a two-meter-long red fish on the lake, and he had heard old people talk about calves being swallowed by big red fish.
It is said that at the end of the 19th century, a group of Belarusians caught a large red fish in Kanas Lake, weighing several tons, and a dozen horses transported it for three days and three nights, so they had to discard the remaining fish.
If this rumor is true, then the big red fish caught by these Belarusians is the largest large red fish that people have caught so far.
The scientific name of the big red fish is "gero salmon", because the body is red during breeding, commonly known as "big red fish", gero salmon is a fierce fish living in fresh water, huge size, adult weight up to 70 kg, from the description of "lake monster", gero salmon is the closest to the image of "lake monster" fish.
Is the "lake monster" a gero salmon in the end
The name of Kanas Lake means "beautiful and mysterious lake" in Mongolian, legend has it that Genghis Khan once passed by Kanas Lake on the way to the conquest, felt that the scenery here was beautiful, so he stationed troops here, he drank the lake water, found that it quenched his thirst, and gave the lake the name "Kanas".
Kanas Lake is located in Burzin County, northwest of the Altai Mountains, in the shape of a meniscus, at an altitude of 1370 meters, is a naturally formed valley glacial lake, because the climate of the area is cold, so the water quality of the lake is very good, is a famous "color change lake".
The formation of Kanas Lake is related to the new tectonic movement of the Altai Mountains, according to research, 15,000 years ago, due to the tectonic fault of the earth's crust and glacial erosion, the Kanas River valley was formed deep between the mountains, Kanas Lake is a typical glacial erosion U-shaped valley of the river valley, coupled with the accumulation and blockage of the glacier terminal moraine, the formation of Kanas Lake.
Today, near the Lake District, obvious glacial landforms such as cirques, horn peaks, drifting gravel and sheep's backs can also be observed.
Affected by the humid climate of the Arctic Ocean, Kanas Lake has an annual precipitation of 600 mm, surrounded by forests formed by Xinjiang spruce, larch, fir and other tree species, the forest is full of shrubs and flowers, which is not only a good place for tourism, but also a place worthy of investigation by scientific researchers.
Kanas Lake is located deep in the mountains and old forests, far from residential areas, only a few herders are active nearby, so for a long time, the fishery resources and aquatic biological resources here have not been artificially destroyed, which is very valuable for research and protection.
There are about eight species of fish living in Kanas Lake, and the survey is certainly not aimed at small or herbivorous fish.
So after a deletion rule, the remaining are river whiting, arctic fennel, fine scale salmon and gero salmon, after the analysis and investigation of experts, most of the "big red fish" observed are gero salmon.
Gero salmon mostly live in mountain rivers and streams with low water temperature, high transparency and rich oxygen content.
In the mainland, the gero salmon only lives in the waters of the Irtysh River system and the Heilongjiang River, this fish has a fierce temperament, feeding on fish living in the same water and snakes, frogs, rodents, water birds and other animals that often move in the water, someone once caught a gero salmon of about 7 kg in Kanas Lake, and found a wild duck weighing about 1.5 kg in its belly.
What the gero salmon and the rumored "lake monster" have in common is that the skin of the gero salmon is reddish-brown during the breeding season, and the ventral fin and rump are orange-red, hence the name "big red fish", which matches the appearance characteristics of the "lake monster".
The "lake monster" that people saw before is likely to be the gero salmon breeding or foraging, and occasionally surfaced to be seen, because of its peculiar appearance, it was rumored to be "lake monster" by people who did not know the truth.
Moreover, the salmon is the largest and most ferocious of the four fish, with many sharp teeth in the mouth, dense barbs growing on the upper and lower palate and tongue, and the ability to prey on larger animals.
According to the analysis of researchers, in the past, large gero salmon were distributed all over the world, and later with the movement of the earth's crust and changes in the natural environment, most areas of gero salmon were extinct, and the natural environment of Kanas Lake was well preserved and was not damaged by man, so the salmon moved here to survive.
According to news reports, the staff of the Xinjiang Kanas Scenic Area Management Committee clearly responded that the so-called "lake monster" is the gero salmon.
However, in the current records, the largest body length of the Jero salmon in the Shelinger River Basin in Mongolia is 180 cm and weighs 45 kg, and the largest length of the Jero salmon in Heilongjiang is 134 cm and weighs 23.3 kg, and in 1980 the expedition team captured the Jero salmon with a body length of 120 cm and a weight of 11.7 kg.
According to the accounts of various witnesses, the "big red fish" they saw were about ten meters long, almost reaching the length of a whale, and there was a big gap between the size of the Jero salmon.
In addition to the size gap, there are some unexplained questions about the identification of the "lake monster" in Kanas Lake as a gero salmon, such as whether Kanas Lake has the necessary conditions for giant fish to survive.
Kanas Lake is an alpine lake with an altitude of more than 1,300 meters, and it is rare for a large fish like the "lake monster" to survive in this high-latitude alpine lake.
Gero salmon is a species of salmon that migrates during the breeding season, spawning in May, spending the winter in larger and deeper waters after spawning, generally migrating twice a year, reproductive migration to the upper reaches of the river in the spring and feeding migration to the depths of the water in the fall.
And Kanas Lake belongs to the river lake, its upstream and downstream channels are relatively narrow, metaphorically like a leaky circle on both sides, and there are many rocky shoals connected to the lake area, like the "lake monster" such a huge fish, how to complete the biannual cluster migration through the narrow river?
Whales live in the sea, the sea has complex biological systems and vast areas, but Kanas Lake is the narrowest narrow lake of only a thousand meters, how can it accommodate a huge fish like whales?
For the living environment of Kanas Lake, some experts and scholars who study fish use formulas widely recognized by the biological community to calculate and conclude that the largest fish in Kanas Lake will not be more than 4 meters long.
From the results of the study of gero salmon in Heilongjiang and gero salmon in the Yenisei River, it can be concluded that the body length of gero salmon increases correspondingly with age, but this growth is not without restrictions, young fish grow faster, after 10 years of age the growth of body length becomes slow, after a certain age, it will stop growing.
As for how many years it takes for gero salmon to grow to a body length of more than 10 meters, there is no definitive answer to explain.
The legends about "water monsters" and "lake monsters" have always been talked about, such as the most famous "Loch Ness monster", as well as the "Tianchi monster" of Changbai Mountain, the "gods" of Qinghai Lake, etc., and the "lake monster" of Kanas Lake, research experts have invested a lot of experience in it, but similar rumors are becoming more and more mysterious in word of mouth.
Whether the "lake monster" widely circulated in the legend of Kanas Lake is a gero salmon, and if it is not a gero salmon, it is not a fish species that has not yet been discovered, this question needs to be further investigated and verified, and perhaps only the real capture of the legendary "lake monster" alive, this mystery that has plagued people for decades, can be solved.
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Author: Yeonjin
Editor: Murray