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Mermaids

do you believe in mermaids?

  • yes

    Votes: 8 25.0%
  • no

    Votes: 18 56.3%
  • undecided

    Votes: 4 12.5%
  • i am decended from one!

    Votes: 2 6.3%

  • Total voters
    32
could these be reptiods that are lost or out skinny dipping? or the result of hillbilly inbreeding?
 
<<<btw have there been any good sightings of a mermaid in recent times?>>>

In my part of the world, the West Coast of Canada, there were a number of recorded sightings of mermaids in relatively recent times:

1) In the late-1800's, a party of 3 or 4 white settlers accompanied by a Native Indian were in a boat off Point Grey, Vancouver (west of the present University of BC) when a mermaid with long yellow hair appeared just a few feet off their boat and stared at them. The Indian was extremely scared and claimed it to be a bad omen as people who see one would soon die. He told them that a dead mermaid had been seen in Squamish River (- that's on the way to Whistler where the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held). The boaters were all respected citizens and all swore that this sighting was indeed true. Found a photo of a newspaper article with their names in a local history book.

2) More recently, in 1967, off Victoria, "BC Ferry passengers saw what they claimed to be a mermaid sitting on rocks at the entrance to Active Pass. Reports indicated that the mermaid had long blonde hair, the lower body of a porpoise and was sitting on the rocks eating a salmon. Photos taken by a man in an aircraft support the ferry passengers' description. The Times-Colonist newspaper reported the sighting and printed the photo. A copy of the newspaper report is available, but unfortunately none of the passengers who reportedly saw the mermaid are available for further comment."
http://www.tourismvictoria.com/Content/EN/747.asp

In the same vein, here we've got Canada's first underwater statue, a 9' bronze mermaid anchored in 60' of water off the shore at Saltery Bay Provincial Park near Powell River, BC. There are some nice pictures here:

http://www.divingbccanada.com/gallery.htm
 
Another shot of Canadian mermaid

Here's another angle of the Emerald Princess (she's got her own title, of course!)
 
Well, we have a unspoken agreement in our family to not discuss great-great-great-great-great grandma's tail, but since I am among friends....
 
I remember

reading (I think i had read all his books) one of Ivan T. Sandersons books and he mentioned the Aqutic apes and that If you looked at your skin between the two toes after the big toe ( I remeber pulling my foot up as close as I could too my face an checking ) some folks had "that webbing 'at least a little,some more than others' still"..It was real thouht provoking reading..he was the best!! on those sorts of things. iTS POSSIBLE..
 
I would've buried this issue until I read about the Benbecula mermaid. If they could only find where the coffin is, it would put this issue to rest. Basically the story goes a mermaid was seen frolicing around a fishing boat and a boy clocked the bugger square on the back with a rock, killing it. Few days later, it washes up on shore. An "autopsy" (best they could muster back in the day) confirmed it was a human-like creature with soft, pearlescent skin, and a fish like tail. female is form, resembled a young woman with developed breasts and greenish hair (algae). anyways, the good folk of Benbecula buried it somewhere and the location was lost. Since these people live off the sea, a seal, whale, large fish, or what not could be a reasonable explaination, however it could've been a young woman who drowned inflated to myth and what not. but there is less evidence of this.
 
In some museums, they ahve preserved fetuses and stillborns of children that look jsut like 'monsters'. One had a fish tail, the other ahd only one eye. The former is due to our development due to our evolutionary past, the altter jsut a genetic defect. I find it amazing though that many of our myths can be foudn inside of us.

Not that I think such myths were caused by deformed children, it's just interesting that the tow are so similiar.
 
Have just returned from my hols (Florida,where I saw manatees), no way could they be mistaken, even by the most p*ssed up sailor.:eek!!!!: . Lovely place by the way.
 
<<<Have just returned from my hols (Florida,where I saw manatees), no way could they be mistaken, even by the most p*ssed up sailor.>>>

Sure thing. Who normally witnessed mermaids (sea serpents, etc.)? People TRAINED to observe things at sea - experienced seamen or fishermen. It was not a one-man delusion - usually the whole crew witnessed things like that. Experienced seamen could easily notice the difference between a seal or manatee and a woman with hair and boobs :) , even with a fishtail. Can anyone seriously think that people in the Middle Ages were more "stupid" or "backward" than we today? (Personally I think they were more normal at those times than most of us now, at least when it came to moral principles, integrity and faith in our Creator.) Why cannot we simply acknowledge: yes, there are unknown forms of life existing parallel to our own world, instead of stubbornly searching for ridiculous explanations?
 
In some museums, they ahve preserved fetuses and stillborns of children that look jsut like 'monsters'. One had a fish tail, the other ahd only one eye. The former is due to our development due to our evolutionary past, the altter jsut a genetic defect.

That sounds pretty bizarre. Do you remember what stages of development these two...monsters... were in? And was the eye in the middle of the forehead like that of a cyclops?
 
Bannik said:
That sounds pretty bizarre. Do you remember what stages of development these two...monsters... were in? And was the eye in the middle of the forehead like that of a cyclops?

Well, devoloping fetuses go through the stages of 'evolution'. PArticularly, they have gills for a while and such. If there's a genetic defect that causes a stoppage at some point of devlopment, the fetus will keep those traits. Of course, it will also probably be dead...

And yes, IIRC it was in the center of the head.
 
That's just a myth. At no stage in it's development will a human foetus have a fishtail.
 
Inverurie Jones said:
That's just a myth. At no stage in it's development will a human foetus have a fishtail.

If it's just a myth, then where did this child's fishtail come from? Is is the result of recessive genes that had somehow become activated?
 
Damned if I know, but it ain't normal. I mean, are we talking tail flukes and things here?
 
Inverurie Jones said:
Damned if I know, but it ain't normal. I mean, are we talking tail flukes and things here?

Reminds me of that episode of Star Trek Next Generation where the whole crew gets exposed to some virus which activates their recessive genes thereby turning them all into manimals (and womenimals). As usual, Data came to the rescue.:cool:
 
Inverurie Jones said:
That's just a myth. At no stage in it's development will a human foetus have a fishtail.

Not a fish-tail, but a tail. And if there's sufficient mutation to cause it to fan out...there you go.

However, we DO have gills. They just develop into our ears, IIRC.
 
rigmarole said:
Not a fish-tail, but a tail.

This is your original quote:"In some museums, they ahve preserved fetuses and stillborns of children that look jsut like 'monsters'. One had a FISH tail,..." (my emphasis)

However, we DO have gills. They just develop into our ears, IIRC.


We have GILLS that develope into ours EARS?:sceptic: :wtf: This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
 
Bannik said:
This is your original quote:"In some museums, they ahve preserved fetuses and stillborns of children that look jsut like 'monsters'. One had a FISH tail,..." (my emphasis)



We have GILLS that develope into ours EARS?:sceptic: :wtf: This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

Well, yeah, cuz it looked like a fish tail :p

Sorry, should have been more specific.

As for the gills, in mammals they devolop into the mouth, ears, and nose, I do believe.

They aren't true gills in that we breathe with them, but they devlop much like the gills that fish eventually have. In fact, all vertebrates have the same 4 basic structures that then idfferentiaite into their particular organs.

"The human embryo has a tail and bears a striking resemblance to embryos of other vertebrates, from fish to mammals.
It has gill-like arches which will grow to form parts of the head and neck; in fish these eventually develop into gills.

http://www.cbctrust.com/PRENATAL.html
 
rigmarole said:
Well, yeah, cuz it looked like a fish tail :p

Sorry, should have been more specific.

As for the gills, in mammals they devolop into the mouth, ears, and nose, I do believe.

They aren't true gills in that we breathe with them, but they devlop much like the gills that fish eventually have. In fact, all vertebrates have the same 4 basic structures that then idfferentiaite into their particular organs.

Oh, I see. Thanks for clearing that up.:yeay:
 
Mermaid boob job

City Wants Bigger Bust for Mermaid

Mon Mar 29,10:33 AM ET


WARSAW (Reuters) - The mermaid patron of a Polish coastal town faces plastic surgery after councilors decided her breasts were too small and hips too wide, a city official said Monday.

The mermaid's looks became a hot topic during talks in the city hall on a promotion campaign for Ustka, a small port on the Baltic coast, in which the town's mermaid shield was supposed to play a key role.

"There was a discussion about the coat of arms and one female councilor said jokingly that the mermaid's breasts were too small and that she was a bit fat," city hall spokesman told Reuters.

The joke became a serious idea when local and national media got wind of the debate, giving sleepy Ustka plenty of coverage.

"We are now considering altering the mermaid slightly by making her breasts bigger and making her leaner," the spokesman said. "She will become more attractive and Ustka will gain publicity."

The soon-to-be revamped mermaid can be seen on the town's web page; http://www.ustka.pl/ustka.html?section=40.

Source
 
Just got through reading Greer's Monster book and it's section on mermaids, and a few things became quite clear.

1) The journals of sailors and what they saw way back when are regularly used to point towards behavior of animals and sea life in the past - with mermaids a notable exception. Does science thus accept the word of the sailors on things they know and observe all the time, but flatly reject that they would point the same kind of exacting observation and mistake a manatee for a mermaid?

2) So much of the lore about the mermaid involves hearing their song and thus knowing a storm is coming... or killing/messing with one and getting bad luck. IS that so dissimilar from the Banshee?
 
Sounds like the work of an entriprising Fortean:

Fishy find sparks alert

BY JONATHAN BARNES

October 22, 2004 06:46

SHIVERING with fear, Louise Bawley clutched the policeman's arm as they edged towards the mysterious figure in the water.

Her son and nephew watched from the car, waiting for the grisly discovery on the banks of the River Orwell.

They had spotted the "body" as they parked up to finish some takeaway food on their way home from a cinema trip to Ipswich on Wednesday night. Stranger still, it looked like a mermaid.

"We had driven under the Orwell Bridge and parked up in a layby," said Mrs Bawley, 42.

"It was dark but I could see this figure, lying half on the embankment and half in the water.

"I could see a head with hair and I said to the boys: 'I don't want to scare you, but that looks like a body.'

"We put the car headlights on and edged towards it, and we could see an arm and a tail. I called the police and told them: 'I think we've found a mermaid'. They told me to keep the boys in the car and they were on their way."

Police arrived at the scene, beside the B1456 at Wherstead, within minutes and Mrs Bawley, from Stutton, left her son Will, 14, and nephew Sam Hall, 12, in the safety of the car to join the investigation at about 8.30pm.

"I held on to the policeman's arm as we went towards it and he kicked the body over. It was a woman's figure in full glory, completely life-size, with a tail. Bits of it were coming off.

"I still wasn't sure what it was at first but we found it was this beautifully painted mermaid model, made out of papier mache. It could have been washed up but I don't know why it was there."

The mystery partially solved, Pc Ben Coombes lifted the figure out of the water and it is now back on dry land at Capel St Mary Police Station.

"I called back the police control room and told them: 'It was a mermaid – but not a real one," said Mrs Bawley, a pre-school worker.

"It sounds absolutely hysterical, I know, but at the time it was extremely scary and I had two very scared boys.

"My 14-year-old was trying to be extremely cool about it, but he wouldn't let me go out of the car when we saw it. If it was a hoax, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to do it."

A spokeswoman for Suffolk police said officers reported the figure had looked "very realistic". She added that if any had information about the mermaid or its owner, they should contact Pc Coombes on 01473 613500.

Source
 
It may be worth mentioning that before we found really good ways of preserving food, sailors, who by nature of the job they do, have to take supplies with them to last long sea voyages, would be, at some point, eating food that had "gone off" to a cirtain degree. We already know that cirtain moulds can cause hallucinations and that when more than one person is hallucinating, the mere suggestion from one person as to what he is experiencing can cause others to experience the same, or a similar, hallucination.
There are also many fish in the sea that have poisons in them that can cause hallucinations.
Imagine a sailor, tripping his face off, thinking about his wife or girlfriend or just women in general (you never seem to hear very much about mermen do you?) that he hasn't seen for a long time, seeing a dolphin or a manatee or a seal in the water. Would it be possible for him to think he'd just seen a mermaid?
I'm not saying that this would explain mermaids but it's worth thinking about.
 
rigmarole said:
Well, devoloping fetuses go through the stages of 'evolution'. PArticularly, they have gills for a while and such. If there's a genetic defect that causes a stoppage at some point of devlopment, the fetus will keep those traits. Of course, it will also probably be dead...

And yes, IIRC it was in the center of the head.

Its untrue and the theory is one fo the greatest scientific frauds of all time:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=423425#423425

Gloria said:
<<<Have just returned from my hols (Florida,where I saw manatees), no way could they be mistaken, even by the most p*ssed up sailor.>>>

Sure thing. Who normally witnessed mermaids (sea serpents, etc.)? People TRAINED to observe things at sea - experienced seamen or fishermen. It was not a one-man delusion - usually the whole crew witnessed things like that. Experienced seamen could easily notice the difference between a seal or manatee and a woman with hair and boobs :) , even with a fishtail. Can anyone seriously think that people in the Middle Ages were more "stupid" or "backward" than we today? (Personally I think they were more normal at those times than most of us now, at least when it came to moral principles, integrity and faith in our Creator.) Why cannot we simply acknowledge: yes, there are unknown forms of life existing parallel to our own world, instead of stubbornly searching for ridiculous explanations?

Exactly the attribution of the manatee to the mermaid legend seems rather lazy (at UnCon I think GNA had a great slide on this comparing and contrasting a mermaid to a manatee) and does a great discredit to sailors. This study:

Lehn, W.H. & Schroeder, I. (1981) The Norse mernan as an optical phenomena. Nature. 289. 362 - 6

It set out the hypothesis that this might be the product of some kind of mirage, they test it by producing merman imges using ray tracing, show how the phenomena will fade as boats get bigger and the viewer is higher above the waves (as happened) and shows an exmaple of how this works from the states.

It appears to be featured in this book:

Science is a discipline characterized as much by mystery and wonder as by experimentation and reproducible results. In The Barmaid's Brain and Other Strange Tales from Science (W. H. Freeman, .95), Jay Ingram purports to expose some of that mystery. The mythical Norse merman, for example, a beast of the sea regarded as a sign that a storm was imminent, may have been nothing more than a distant walrus seen through the "distorting lens of the atmosphere." The barmaid's exceptional ability to recall orders is offered as proof of the human brain's incredible adaptability. The eccentric behavior of young women accused of being witches in 17th-century Salem may have resulted from eating rye bread contaminated with ergot. Ingram's rational explanations for a handful of natural phenomena only add to their wonder, and the book is often amusing.

Cacched version of original page

Book:

The Barmaid's Brain: And Other Strange Tales from Science
by Jay Ingram (1999)
PB:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716747022/revenantmagaz-21
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716747022/wwwrevenantmc-20
HB:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/067087146X/revenantmagaz-21
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716741202/wwwrevenantmc-20

The used copies at .com cost virtually naff all.
 
Are these creatures for real? Discounting the various sightings of manatees and dugongs mistaken for mermaids, there are still several authentic sightings that can only be nothing less than mermaids.
Ancient writings are replete with mention of mermaids. There is this very aged artist in the Caribbean who claims that a mermaid appeared to him and gave him a message. This is the famous artist who sold one of his paintings to the Queen of England ( I think ).
I have a friend who has seen a mermaid washed up on shore after a heavy storm on one of the islands of Indonesia. The creature was gently carried by the locals and put back into the sea as it was crying and trying unsuccessfully to make it back to the sea by itself. My friend ( who was very young then ), described it as being of a greenish color.
 
carlosox said:
I have a friend who has seen a mermaid washed up on shore after a heavy storm on one of the islands of Indonesia. The creature was gently carried by the locals and put back into the sea as it was crying and trying unsuccessfully to make it back to the sea by itself. My friend ( who was very young then ), described it as being of a greenish color.

Wow! Can you elaborate at all on what your friend said happened and/or what the 'mermaid' looked like? Was he young enough that he could have confused some other kind of marine animal (a dolphin maybe?) with a mermaid? When I was a little girl, there was a family of green skinned frog-like people that lived in a spring at the edge of our property, but like most things from childhood, they must have been imaginary. :(
 
<Nods> What kind of sea animal besides certain fish would be green anyway?

Im trying to recall the book in which an old beachcomber describes finding a corpse on the beach. `I thought it was a seal but seals dont wear shoes.`

(nor do mermaids as a matter of fact.)

I got a copy of `Seal Folk and Ocean Paddlers` by McAulay for Xmas. He makes some very interesting points but I dont think it terribly well researched. (to do the subject justice you would have to cover a wide range of things...and actualy speak to some Sami!)

He manages to write a whole book about long sea passages without once using the word `Navigation`

I certainly think hes wrapped the Selkie up well...if not `some` mermaids.

Homo Aves (Who comes from Cornwall and doesnt need to worry about mermaids, save that Zennor girl, and all the Sami in my scandanavian branch of family have reindeer anyway....)
 
From Snopes:

Claim: Photographs show a mermaid-like creature discovered in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2005]

mermaid1.jpg

mermaid2.jpg

mermaid3.jpg


Origins: Proving once again the maxim that there's nothing new under the sun (or "everything old is new again") comes the set of photographs displayed above, purportedly depicting a bizarre ocean-dwelling "mermaid" creature unearthed by powerful tidal forces, the latest entry in a series of older photographs being passed off as images associated with the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

We last saw these very same photographs back in 2003, when they were circulated on the Internet as a "Mermaid found in the Philippines" who had been "caught by fishermen in Visayas Region." Not only were they hoaxes — then and now — but hoaxes of a type that is hundreds if not thousands of years old.

Creatures identified as "merfolk" (half-human, half-fish creatures who live in the sea, both male "mermen" and female "mermaids") have been a staple of folklore and mythology for many centuries. Although the popular modern image of merfolk is almost exclusively limited to depictions of human-sized, attractive females with human upper torsos and fish-like tails (as exemplified by Ariel, the heroine of Disney's popular 1989 animated film adaptation of "The Little Mermaid," an 1836 children's story by Hans Christian Andersen), that image has not always been the standard.

Depictions of mermaids as gruesome, dimunitive creatures, and the use of parts of other animals (primarily monkeys and fish) to create exemplars of such creatures, are both very, very old, as demonstrated by a supposed mummified mermaid which was exhibited in Japan several centuries ago and is thought to be up to 1,400 years old.

More recently (but still a considerable time ago) phony mermaid-like creatures crafted from various body parts and bones of fish and other animals, usually joined to dessicated monkey heads or skulls, were a common feature of 19th-century dime museums, carnivals, traveling circuses and their sideshows. Although many such fabricated mermaids date from that era, the most famous example was the "Feejee Mermaid" (also known as the "Fiji Mermaid" or "FeJee "Mermaid"), a grotesque creature allegedly "taken [by Japanese fishermen] among the Fejee Islands, and preserved in China" before being purchased by one Dr. J. Griffin, acting an agent of the Lyceum of Natural History in London, in 1842:

fiji.jpg


The mysterious Dr. Griffin was in fact a fictitious character played by Levi Lyman, an associate of the famous American showman and huckster P. T. Barnum, who exhibited the "found" creature throughout the U.S. and in his New York-based American Museum for a couple of decades before it was lost when the museum was destroyed by a fire in 1865. The "mermaid" was actually pieced together using papier-mâché, fish parts, the body of an infant orangutan, and a monkey head.

Although times have changed considerably since the days of Barnum, human nature has not. We continue to be fascinated by the same tales and the same forgeries, crafted in the same time-honored fashion.

Last updated: 11 February 2005

Original Snopes story

Edited to add: Emps, dahling, could you please fix that really fat link in the post you made 23/10/2004?

[Emp edit: Done.]

[Leaferne edit: You totally rule and we need a salaaming smiley]
 
Sidecar Jon - what have you done, now?
 
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