### q4 deformed snakes might explain sea serpent myths > [One of the most infamous sea serpent episodes](http://www.kew.org/discover/blogs/monster-massachusetts) spanned decades. From 1817 to 1819, a mass of people, including fishermen, military personnel and pedestrians, reported seeing a sea monster at least 80 but perhaps 100 feet long, with a head resembling a horse, in the harbor off Gloucester, Massachusetts. There were so many eyewitness reports that the Linnaean Society of New England formed a special investigating committee to examine the possibility of such a creature. In October 1817, two young boys found a 3-foot-long serpent body with humps on a beach not far from where the sightings had occurred. The Linnaean Society declared that the Gloucester sea serpent had visited the harbor to lay eggs, and that the specimen the boys had found represented one of its young. They invented an entirely new genus and named it *Scoliophis atlanticus* (“Atlantic Humped Snake”). Shortly thereafter, naturalist Alexandre Lesueur examined the specimen and reported that it was, in fact, a deformed common blacksnake ([*Coluber constrictor*](http://eol.org/pages/1286340/overview)). - reminds me of [[2021-05-17 Mythological Cats]] and how some myths originate from deformed normal animals. - [View Highlight](https://smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/five-real-sea-monsters-brought-life-early-naturalists-180953155?__readwiseLocation=0%2F0%2F15%2F3%2F1%2F45%2F1%2F3%2F15%3A0%2C5%2F15%2F3%2F1%2F45%2F1%2F3%2F15%3A2#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20infamous%2Cdeformed%20common%20blacksnake%20(Coluber%20constrictor).) - [[Five Real Sea Monsters Brought to Life by Early Naturalists by Grace Costantino#q4 deformed snakes might explain sea serpent myths|View in Vault]]