The Theory of Nothing

Are mermaids real?

Are mermaids real?

I like this subject because I wrote a novel about supposed mermaids called ‘Aqua Sapiens,’ and I can tell you that that my mermaids were not like the ‘Little Mermaid.’ They were intelligent killers.

Mermaids are considered a legendary aquatic creature that has the top part of human female and the bottom or tail of fish. They have been referenced from antiquity, and they have become a very popular subject for not only literature but also art.

The word mermaid literally means sea-maid or young girl. Drunken sailors often mistake manatees for mermaids, enough so that their existence is often considered folklore.

There is no scientific evidence for the existence of such a creature, but are they possible? That’s a good question. As it turns out, there have been many thousands of sightings all the way back to 1000 BC. Greeks saw mermaids and soon incorporated them into their literature and their mythology. Apparently Atargalis, a goddess, loved a mortal and killed him by accident. Ashamed for what she had done, Atargalis jumped into the sea and took the form of a fish.

It seems that many different peoples reference mermaids as part of their culture, including the inhabitants of Britain, Europe, China, India, Africa and many other locations. The images of mermaid have appeared in art and literature for centuries. Their images have even appeared as heraldry on shields.

There have been several hoaxes and even an Animal Planet episode that supposedly showed a beached mermaid, but this was just a made up story, not a real event.

So, are mermaids even possible? The answer is maybe.

First of all, how could a creature like this evolve? One thing is for sure; they could not have evolved from a fish. Although a vertebrate, a fish is too primitive in evolutionary history to become something that looked human.

On the other hand if we consider the cetaceans, there is a slight chance that a dolphin-like species could have evolved into a mermaid-like creature. This would have to happen by two methods. One, an early hominid species could have taken to the seas and slowly had their useless legs replaced by a cetacean tail. The other method is that cetaceans could have hung around a shore and evolved hominid-like features, including arms and hands instead of fins.

Personally, I vote for the former method. Perhaps an early hominid, an early human species, took to the seas near land to escape land predators and by evolution had their legs replaced by a cetacean fin so that they could swim faster. At the same time they would have retained their human-like faces and arms and hands. They also would have kept their mammalian sexual form, and this means that there would have been mermen.

This is not a crazy idea. Remember that dolphins and wales are mammals, not fish or reptiles. They obviously started out on land and took to the seas. I don’t see why this couldn’t have happened to an early human-like species. I’m just saying.

Thanks for reading.