In Italian folklore, Lariosauro is a lake monster said to live in Lake Como in Italy, about 50 km (30 miles) north of Milan.
In 1946, eyewitnesses allegedly reported seeing a reptile-like animal swimming in the waters of the lake.
It was called lariosauro, the same name used a century before to name a prehistoric reptile whose fossilized remains were found by the lake (Lariosaurus balsami).
A weekly of Como, a week after the first article, wrote it was a sturgeon, but the sturgeon as well as the monster appear to be more simply a hoax invented by the press.
Skeptic researcher Giorgio Castiglioni, who studied these cases, thinks that the animal of 1954 was an otter, the monster of August 1957 a hoax, the beast of September 1957 possibly a pike, and the 2003 eel was a group of fish swimming together.