Champ is a one of my favorite lake monsters. It’s also one of the few cryptids I think could actually exist and even avoid human detection. How? Misidentification. By that I do not mean he’s a fish, or a plesiosaur, but I think they are a unique, likely Pygmy sized species of freshwater cetaceans. I saw a video a long time ago where a woman was hunting champ and was actually able to get some interesting audio. They resembled the clicks and whistles used by dolphins. For a long time though, this didn’t fully satisfy me. I kept thinking to myself that surely something as big as a dolphin wouldn’t go unnoticed either, especially a population of them. And then I learned about the ancient mega lake Paratethys and how it was home to Pygmy cetaceans including the smallest ever baleen whale species. It got me wondering if there were say, a smaller than usual species, especially if traveling in a pod, could they look like a monster? Then what if their food source is closer to the bottom of the lake? If they die in the deep depths, could that be reason for not finding a body? Then what an individual? Would they look similar enough to a fish that someone looking for a dinosaur might brush them off? Mind you when I say Pygmy, I mean an individual would be 6 feet long maximum