Long Necked Pinniped, Parsons 1751
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 26th, 2008
Before there was Bernard Heuvelmans’ long-necked Megalotaria longicollis, or my and Patrick Huyghe’s ideas, C. A. Oudemans proposed in 1892, in his masterwork The Great Sea Serpent, the species Megophias megophias, an immense long-necked, long-tailed pinniped. Oudemans’s reconstruction of Megophias is above.
Images of Sea Serpents appeared often, during the 1700s and 1800s, to reinforce the learned thoughts on this cryptid.
Now comes a remarkable discovery.
With congratulations, I applaud Darren Naish, who brings to our attention that…
…a Long-necked seal was described in the literature long prior to the work of Heuvelmans or even Oudemans. Reporting the observations of a Dr Grew on the Long-necked seal observed ‘in diverse countries’, James Parsons (1751) included an illustration [shown above] and description of this pinniped. He described how it was ‘[M]uch slenderer than either of the former [two other pinnipeds were described earlier in the manuscript]; but that, wherein he principally differs, is the length of his neck; for from his nose-end to his fore-feet, and from thence to his tail, are the same measure; as also in that, instead of his fore-feet, he hath rather fins; not having any claws thereon, as have the other kinds. The head and neck of this species are exactly like those of an otter. One of those, which is also now in our musaeum [sic], taken notice of by the same author, has an head shaped like that of a tortoise; less in proportion than that of every other species, with a narrowness of stricture round the neck: the fore-feet of these are five-finger’d, with nails, like the common seal. Their size, as to the utmost growth of an adult, is also very different. That before described, was 7 feet and an half in length; and, being very young, had scarce any teeth at all’ (Parsons 1751, p. 111).
Quite how a pinniped said at first to have a very long neck is then said to have a head and neck ‘exactly like those of an otter’ I’m not sure, and of course it’s not possible to determine whether this ‘long-necked seal’ has anything to do with Heuvelmans’s hypothetical animal of the same name. It’s tempting to assume that it was a confused description of a sea lion but, given that Parsons described a specimen 2.3 m long as a juvenile, it still sounds like an interesting animal that we’d like to know more about. To confuse things further, Parsons also mentioned a specimen which ‘is but 3 feet long, is very thick in proportion, and has a well-grown set of teeth’ (Parsons 1751, p. 112)….
The tantalising possibility remains that the larger specimen would have been significant in zoological terms, but given that we lack data on the provenance and fate of the specimens that were described by Parsons, any further comments would be entirely speculative. James Parsons, 1705-1770, was a British physician who studied medicine in Paris and later worked under James Douglas in London. As yet I haven’t done any research on the specimens he studied or wrote about, but this obviously should be done. What happened to his long-necked seal, and what was it?
Original source cited by Naish: Parsons, J. 1751. A dissertation upon the Class of the Phocae Marinae. Philosophical Transactions 47, 109-122.
Read all of Naish’s blog posting on this here.
(Throughout this page, I have sprinkled various old wood carvings and other illustrations that may show alignments to or variations on Parsons’ long-necked pinniped.)
- Similar Phenomena:
Very interesting and compelling, but would they grow big enough to support the length reported in many sea and lake serpent sightings?
And why haven’t we found any recent remains? For that matter, seals aren’t exactly known for being reclusive animals. Wouldn’t they have been found long before now?
Could be an otter.
They also could have been open sea manatees or dugongs with the longer neck. They have been known to be a little shy. I have always wondered if any of the sea monsters were more mammal than reptile. I especially love the description of the ones living in North American lakes around Utah (I believe their description location starts at the Rocky Mountains and moves west). Basically they are suppose to have the face of a dog (ears included). That to me sounds more mammal. I wish I could go searching.
Playing with a little speculation here, maybe a long-necked pinniped would live only on the dark depths of the Arctic sea, using his neck to hunt for fish the same way plesiousaurs did. There’s of course the problem of coming to the surface for air; but maybe the glaciers have pockets of air trapped in holes that this animal could get to thanks again to the neck.
Who knows? Maybe with the Arctic ice melting down and more boats using it as a trade route, we’ll have more reports of long-necked cryptids in the coming years
This is more circumstantial evidence that Heuvelmans was correct in his basic assumption–that almost all sea serpent sightings could be explained by unknown species of marine mammals, chief among them, a long-necked seal.
Sadly, one wonders if the thing hasn’t already gone extinct, seeing how sea-serpent sightings have dropped precipitiously in number over the years. Still, while I’m not up on recent ones (if any) I know there were a few tantalizing sightings from the sixties and seventies… though, again, one couldn’t be sure that the animals involved haven’t died off since then.
Would the existence of such an animal explain some of the lake monsters around the world? Eh. Maybe. Still, how a gregarious mammal could live in a confined body of water–or migrate back and forth between it and the sea–without making itself better known… I just don’t know. It seems very problematic to me.
I’m more interested, therefore, in the sea serpent phenomenon (rather than the lake monster one) from this angle. Surely, as Heuvelmans maintained, all these fairly similar sightings can’t be mere misidentifications, illusions, and hoaxes. To me this is the most exciting of all cryptozoological creatures, because it seems to most likely to actually exist. Bigfoot is a lot more sensational, but in the end he defies logic and reason on many levels (not that this means he can’t exist). But a long-necked pinniped—imagine centuries of mockery directed at the sea serpent being swept away by the discovery of such a pinniped; it would lend a great swell of legitimacy to this half-science we’re all so enamored of–and even though that doesn’t really matter so much, it would nevertheless be satisfying and would magnify the reputations of men like Bernard Heuvelmans and others like him—who deserve it, one feels.
A point here and there:
The accounts I’ve read of lake monsters in Utah do not impress - the Bear Lake creature in particular was a subject of really tall tales.
Bruce Champagne’s analysis of 358 sea cryptid sightings he thought impressive (out of 1247 he reviewed) produced the result that only 7% concerned longnecks.
That figure could be considerably off in either direction, though.
On the one hand, a few of those seven percent are very hard to dismiss: the SS Umfuli and HMS Fly cases come to mind (I am here presuming the Daedalus case to be either a giant squid (known type) or giant eel (unknown type) and the Valhalla case to be a giant eel, swimming as congers occasionally do with the head and forebody out of water. Just my opinions.)
On the other hand, it’s also possible that some humped or many-humped sightings could concern a longnecked animal that did not have its head raised at the time.
If the animal is in the habit of poking just its head out to breathe, it would not be seen often even when a ship is in the right position. Why it would have evolved that habit is a bit puzzling: its likely predators don’t generally hunt by using above-water vision.
It continues to bother me that I would expect an air-breathing animal to have suffered a few lethal encounters with whaling ships, or at least to be the subject of good sightings by whalers. There seem to be very few sightings and no kills or even harpoonings. (The Monongahela case sounds like a hoax. The captain’s speech about how the honor of American whaling men was at stake seems silly for any captain and ridiculous for a New England Yankee, for whom “Kill it” would have been a long speech.)
I will always wonder just what Dr. Parsons was looking at when he said he had access to a 7-foot juvenile specimen of a long-necked seal.
Concerning lack of sightings…I can’t remember who was the first to say it, but someone clever pointed out that most shipping that goes on these days in the oceans are along designated shipping lanes, so as to take the least amount of time.
Back in the 1800’s and earlier, when people were still exploring, ships covered a lot more ocean. Whether ships came across territorial areas where sea serpents frequented, or whether they crossed paths with sea serpents, who is to say.
But in the present, where so many ships follow shipping lanes, there are vast spaces where all kinds of critters may be that we are not.
In reference to MattBille’s question about sea serpents coming across whaling ships, there are actually a few odd encounters. I will try to find the reference, but I believe it was the mid 1850’s there was a ship’s log of a whaling captain who took down a serpent and brought it on board. I believe the captain reported that it began to stink, had very little usable material and was bothering the crew, and they ended up throwing it overboard, though I think the captain made sketches and took measurements of the critter. I don’t own the particular book, but it was a more obscure book on sea serpents which I checked out from our university library.
I think it also has to be kept in mind that we could be dealing with extremely rare animals here. There are some species of ocean going mammals that are known by only a single specimen. There are species of animal in the world that are so rare that they were not even ethnoknown before being discovered. Perhaps these creatures were even on the decline even way back in the 18th century. If these creatures were incredibly rare, this could maybe explain the lack of more sightings by whalers and why they have not been found yet.
I tend to think that most “sea serpent” sightings cannot be attributed to any one species. Sightings descriptions can vary substantially, as can the areas in which they were seen. For example, you get sightings in cold Northern waters as well as in the tropics. To me, this suggests that there are likely more than one unknown species responsible for sea monster sightings. Perhaps some were long necked seals, but I would guess not all. I do think that mammals are a good candidate as they are adaptable to a wide range of environments, and marine mammals have managed to fill many niches, but there could be large unknown reptiles or fish causing some of the sightings as well. I think there’s a chance that long necked seals are merely one among several species causing these types of sightings.
I also think many sea serpent sightings are perhaps caused by a mix of misidentifications, tall tales, and real sightings of a range of different known species as well. For instance, some sightings may be caused by unusual species such as oarfish or giant squid, or maybe out of place animals such as an anaconda or salt water crocodile far from shore or an animal outside of its usual range.
In the end, I think sea serpent sightings probably comprise a healthy mix of misidentification, hoaxes, illusion, as well as probably more than one type of unknown animal. In the instances where it is an unknown species, they could be members of a very rare species, which when combined with the unexplored vastness of the oceans, would explain their ability to evade detection and more numerous accounts.
One thing that has always facinated me about some eye witness accounts of the Loch Ness Monster, is the various ‘on land’ sightings. Some have described a creature that moves in a waddling fashion in a very similar way that a seal or an otter does when they are on land. Could Nessie be a long necked seal? If it’s not a plesiosaur, which is unlikely, then it’s more likely to be mammalian. The only two mammals that bare any resemblance to eye witness accounts are seals and otters. So who knows maybe a long necked seal or a dobhar-chu the giant otter.
Very interesting article. Well done to Darren Naish for digging up this new information.
It looks like there is a contest for who can make the longest post…haha.
“The head and neck of this species are exactly like those of an otter.”.
When I read that, I was very confused! it sounds like the author was writing about one species, and then immediately forgot was he was doing and began writing about another species! I don’t know what to think of this. The drawings don’t seem anatomically (the tails I noticed especially. Perhaps he is merely a poor artist, in which case, I CERTAINLY forgive him!) or proportionately accurate, either.