Hippo Foot Ashtray

In December 1933, the Daily Mail’s investigative expedition to Loch Ness submitted plaster casts of some strange footprints to the British Museum. Their big game hunter and film maker, Marmaduke ‘Duke’ Wetherell claimed to have found them on the shore. They were pronounced to be from the foot of a hippopotamus! Wetherell had made them with one of his trophies, a hippopotamus foot ashtray and went on to fake the famous “Surgeon’s Photograph”. After Adrian Shine and David Martin of the Loch Ness Project investigated and revealed this hoax in 1994, Peter Wetherell, Duke’s grandson, presented the ashtray to Adrian for exhibition here.