10 Lake Monsters That Aren’t Just Nessie Rip-Offs

6 Dobhar-Chu

6-Dobhar-Chu
Photo credit: Bango Art

The Irish dobhar-chu is a huge creature that is part otter and part wolf. It has impenetrable skin and an insatiable bloodlust. For centuries, legends of the “Irish crocodile” species in inland Irish waters have told of these animals tearing through humans and horses that wander too near a dobhar-chu habitat.

Unlike other lake monsters, there are no real animals in the area that sound like a dobhar-chu. If these animals were numerous, faster than galloping horses, and fully comfortable on both land and water, they could best be rationalized as animal representations of a natural phenomenon like flash flooding.

These creatures would have to exist in the imagined intersection of several factors. For example, a flood would have to carry a person to a place where the corpse is discovered by a critically endangered bear that shreds the body and leaves it for other humans to find later.