Panama Monster Really a Sloth?

Pale and snub-nosed with long arms and curving claws, an "alien" discovered in September had five teenagers thinking they'd had a close encounter in a Panama creek.

"We took it out of the water and started throwing rocks and sticks at it. We had never seen anything like that.""I was in the river and I felt something grabbing my legs," one of the boys told the local television program Telemetro Reporta a few days after the sighting in the Cerro Azul region of Panama City.

After beating the creature until they thought it was dead, the teenagers threw it back into the water, returning later to snap photos of the body sprawled on a rock. Their pictures of the dead "alien" posted online quickly earned the creature the nickname "Panama ET."

But an autopsy has now revealed that the purported alien was actually a species of sloth that had died and started to decay before the boys' discovery.

"Most people know how a dead animal looks like in a dry environment," said André Sena Maia, a veterinarian at Niterói Zoo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"The body must have got stuck under the water, and the movement of the currents gave [the boys] the false impression that it was alive."

Alien Looks Due to Watery Grave

Panamanian officials recovered the "alien" four days after the teenagers had thrown it back into the creek.

A biopsy done at the National Environmental Authority of Panama (ANAM) concluded that the creature was a male Bradypus variegates, also known as a three-toed sloth, a common species in Central and South America.

"The sloth had severe signs of trauma on its body, as shown in the necropsy," said Melquiades Ramos, a veterinarian at the ANAM Department of Protected Areas and Wild Lives.

"From the state it is shown in the pictures, we can estimate it had been in the water for about two days before being found."

The body's unearthly appearance is the normal state for a putrefying animal immersed in water, said Maia, of the Niterói Zoo.

That's because water accelerates the loss of fur and gives the dead animal smooth and almost glowing skin, he said.

In addition, bacteria decomposing the body created gases that made the organs swell, adding to the creature's extraordinary appearance.

After identifying the body, ANAM staff buried the sloth.

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I can see the characteristics like it's claw that would be compared to a sloth but:

it's facial structure don't seem to match and I haven't been able to find anything about approximately how long or how big this UC(unexplained creature) is because if you look at a full body picture of a sloth and then look at the picture of the UC you'll see that at first glance it looks like the body of a man or looks pretty long compared to a sloth. I'll update if I come across anything regarding the size.

Loch Ness Monster Found on Google Earth?

Millions have traveled to the shores of Scotland's Loch Ness, hoping to catch a rare glimpse of the world's most famous lake monster.

Jason Cooke, 25, a security guard from Nottingham, England, told the U.K.'s Sun that he spotted the monster while scanning the site's satellite imagery.But earlier this week, a British man revealed that he spied the legendary Loch Ness monster while searching Google Earth from his very own home.

"I couldn't believe it. It's just like the descriptions of Nessie," he said.

The first recorded sighting of the monster was nearly 1,500 years ago when a giant beast is said to have leaped out of a lake near Inverness, Scotland, and ate a local farmer.

Since then, the myth of the Loch Ness monster has only magnified.

In 1934, a London doctor snapped a photograph that seemed to show a dinosaur-looking creature with a long neck emerging from the water. Then a home movie from 1960 showed a strange figure swimming in the water behind a family picnicking, although British intelligence later analyzed the film and concluded the figure was likely "something inanimate."

Of the millions of people who have looked into Loch Ness searching for something within, about 1,000 visitors have reported unusual sightings.

Unfortunately for Nessie-trackers, the "monster" spotted by Cooke looks an awful lot like a boat. But if you'd like to check it out for yourself, enter the following coordinates in Google Earth: Latitude 57°12'52.13"N, Longitude 4°34'14.16"W.

(via ABCNews.com)

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In my opinion it looks like a boat. You can see the ripple in the water that supposedly looks like it's flippers. Decide for yourself.