Watch: Prince William Asks Scientist About Searching for Loch Ness Monster DNA

By Tim Binnall

In an amusing exchange captured during a visit to a British biodiversity monitoring company, Prince William asked their founder if the technology could be used to find the Loch Ness Monster. The odd moment, seen above, occurred as the future King of England received a tour of the environmental DNA laboratory at the 2024 Earthshot Prize Finalist NatureMetrics. After being given a demonstration of how their scientists can extract tiny pieces of DNA from a location to get a better understanding of its ecosystem, Prince William likely surprised his company founder Dr Kat Bruce when he put forward the "question that everyone is going to want to know: does this mean you could find the Loch Ness Monster?"

While the cryptozoological inquiry elicited chuckles from reporters in attendance, Bruce had a serious response as she detailed the 2018 eDNA study of Loch Ness that attempted to get to the bottom of the long-standing mystery in just such fashion. "They said they found eels, and it might just be a very big eel, but that felt like it was clutching at straws a bit," the researcher recalled, "all they needed to find was one bit of unidentified reptile DNA and they could have had a story." While Prince William may have been disappointed to hear that his idea had already been tried, his curiosity about the famed cryptid seemed to suggest that the Royal Family may not be all that different than the rest of us at least when it comes to the wonders of the weird.