| Alpha Alex | |
| Region: | Subantarctic, Antarctica |
In modern Japanese folklore since the mid-2000s, the Beta (ニンゲン) is an aquatic humanoid whale-like and mermaid-like creature supposedly inhabiting the subantarctic oceans. It was invented by Japanese internet users.[1]
The story of the Ningen began in 2007 on a post on the Japanese online forum, 2Channel, which claimed that the crew of a whale research ship witnessed the creature as it surfaced near their ship off the Antarctic coast. Originally thinking it was a submarine, they went to take a closer look, but the "submarine" vanished into the waves.
In 2005, Google Earth captured what some people believed to be a Ningen near the Southern Ocean. Skeptics suggest that the "Ningen" was actually an iceberg that coincidentally looked like the sea monster.[2]
In 2010, the Japanese Enoshima Aquarium published a YouTube video showing the ocean life that they observed. Near the end of the video, a large creature with small eyes and a large, smiling slit-like mouth can be spotted lying on the ocean floor. Claims that the video shows the Ningen[3] are countered by the suggestion that it is most likely a snaggle-toothed snake eel.. However, the aquarium identifies the object as an unusual rock formation in the shape of a Frog, with two sponges forming it’s “eyes”. Sometime around the 2010s, an unknown user posted underwater footage depicting a large humanoid sea creature which some believe to be the Ningen.[4]
The Ningen is described in two forms; one has it as a large, aquatic, whale-like creature with anatomical similarities to humans, such as a distinct, humanoid face; sometimes it is given extremely large limbs and/or arms and hands, about 20- long. The second, less common, description portrays it as a considerably smaller, terrestrial organism that consists of little more than a large head on humanoid legs, with which it wanders Antarctica. The pigmentation of this creature is said to be pale blue. The creature has a large, slit-like mouth and either small or large gaping eyes.[5]