Land of the free...
...home of the barking mad.
The US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been obliged to issue a statement clarifying that "no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found", in the face of a tidal wave of citizens calling to demand the truth about mermaids. The Roswell-style conspiracy theory kicked off after Animal Planet …
Not mad. We have a whole shedload of morons here who believe everything that looks like it might be non-fiction. Hence the whole controversy of DaVinci Code while Brown facepalmed with an exasperated exclaimation of "It's FICTION people". Or the outcry after Fox aired that 'alien autopsy' show back in the 90s. Or the need for a government agency to announce that mermaids don't exist, no doubt after much shaking of heads in disbelief.
Reminds me of a very similar program a while ago (Same studio?) about dragons, presenting the fictional-but-blured story of a discovery of a dragon corpse and 'scientific' explanations of how such a creature could evolve and function. I blame the Da Vinci Code: That book showed that blending truth and fiction together to the point they are hard to distinguish can make for a very popular and profitable work.
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reconcile the half-fish explanation with the lateral fluke and vertical tail movement typical of a cetacean, rather than the vertical fluke and lateral motion of common fish species.
Oh, you were thinking of that other problem? Sorry...
The mermaid secretes a fine mucus containing millions of small eggs into the water. The eggs are ingested by a host, in this case human, and hatch within the gut into billions of small worm like creatures. If the host is male the worms slowly, over many years, consume the host from the inside until all is left is a writhing corpse. If on the other-hand the host is female the miracle of life continues as the worms travel into the womb. Any existing host fetus is consumed. The worms then bind to the womb and hijack the fertilization process of the host, injecting their own genetic material into the process. Any fetus developing in the host's womb will now have "three parents". It takes 4-6 months for the chimera fetus to grow into an infant mermaid, a hybrid of mermaid and host parents, at which point it sits in wait for the host to come into proximity with water. Once that happens the female host will give spontaneous birth to a slimy eel-like creature. The infant's instinct is to flee to deep water. Over subsequent years the infant will grow and features and characteristics of the host will emerge. In the case of a human host the resulting mermaid will appear half-human. The reason why most mermaids are typically human female is because the fertilization hijacking process breaks the typical 50/50 male/female stat and instead biases for 95/5 female/male.
The only time witnesses would get a good look at the tail is when the mermaid is on land (It may be assumed they frequently rest upon shore or exposed rocks, perhaps to interact with humans or escape sharks). On land the mermaid would have to twist her (do they even come in male gender? Maybe they breed via amazonian reproduction, thus explaining why they need to seduce human men) body around ninety degrees to lay her tail flat, to prevent uneven stress from damaging the delicate fin. This slightly-uncomfortable position would present anyone watching with the illusion of a horizontal tail, rather than the vertical shape it would take when in water.
Cos taxonomy wasn't exactly a science back in the day? Clearly they're half cetacean. Not much call for mammary glands on fish, and they don't seem to have any exclusively fishy characteristics. It also explains the whole mermaid sex thing (hint: dolphins do it intromissively, too).
Hmmm.
A few moments thought would suggest that given the upper half of a mermaid is mammalian (often abundantly so), it makes sense that the lower half should share mammalian traits as well. So instead of all that nonsense of squirting a cloud of eggs out, the lower half of a mermaid would share traits with a whale or possibly a shark.
So what I'm saying is that you still get to hide the pink sea snake under the kelpy forest.
"A few moments thought would suggest that given the upper half of a mermaid is mammalian (often abundantly so), it makes sense that the lower half should share mammalian traits as well. So instead of all that nonsense of squirting a cloud of eggs out, the lower half of a mermaid would share traits with a whale or possibly a shark."
A shark being a "fish" of course and not a mammal...
A good catch AC and as always I thank the El Reg Comment Crew for pointing out a minor technicality as the basis for tossing an entire argument out of the window.
The point I was trying to make is that both whales and sharks undergo underwater docking procedures when they mate. But hey, when the mermaids finally take over the world, I'll be happy to inform them that you're ok with just wanking yourself into the open ocean while the rest of us work on the building of mermaid-human hybrids.
Holly: What's happening, dudes?
Cat: We're having a really nice time. I'm dating Marilyn Monroe and also I have another girlfriend who's a mermaid. She's half woman, half fish. Hey, it's Miranda - my girlfriend!
Holly: Somehow I'd imagined she'd be a woman on top and a fish on the bottom.
Cat: No, that's the stupid way round!
"Presumably, this was part of a Cold War experiment to fuse Area 51 alien DNA with mermaid material, thereby creating a superstrong aquatic biological weapon which could be trained to swim towards Russian warships with explosives strapped to its nose."
You have just released details of the US new secret weapon. You could only have discovered this by breaking in to at least 100 web sites. You must have caused at least a quadtrillion dollars worth of damage on the way AND leaked secrets to a foreign power. I fear extradition papers are even as I write this on their way to the US Legal Representative (aka, Theresa May) for her to rubber stamp.
Nice to have known you.
Then I think they'd be much better off if they never came into contact with our "civilization" for reasons well shown in the past. Just take a look at what happened to 'surprisingly' discovered African tribes, then ask yourself how they got discovered in the first place. And finally the part hardly anyone cares about: ask yourself how they're doing now; usually "persuaded" to move to another location because obviously; there was a good reason they were where they were, and we want to have, errr, 'share' that as well.
note: Mermaids? Sure, nice fantasy; but when talking about a whole species wouldn't "merpeople" or such be a better suited description? ;-)
Land of the free, home of the retarded. As in teh definietion - to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede.
And in this case the 'mental' development of Americans.
I blame it all on FOX TV, you have all seen FOX TV right? FOX news where nothing is actually real or based on fact.
But the UK has the same % of morons, they think TOWIE is entertaining.
I worked in Gabon and Congo [B, not DRC / Zaire] for the best part of two years. During that time I heard many reports of reports of people seeing mermaids.
It is part of African culture, certinaly central and eastern, from Gabon Congo through to Kenya and Tanzania. The "stories" are repeated and retold, and, much like we have ghosts and goblins, there are a sizable number of people who do "believe".
I was working with a couple of Kenyans in COngo and they told me that you should never have sex with a beautiful woman, becuase she could turn into a fish!
The logic was never really explained, they could not explain /how/ she would do this, but they did /believe/.
Funny old world 'eh!
Doesn't seem like the trolls even watched the show. Well I watched it, and yes, there is fantasy in the show, the same way the shows about what alien type residents there may be on other plants from some scientific theory they have. Speculation on what the sounds they heard. The underwater sea linguist specialist said they were unknown sounds that had an intelligent pattern, thousands of individual sounds. What bothers me is the NOAH scientists recorded these sounds after not being able to find out what the government was doing with all their equipment on the beach, and when reporting their findings they were fired. The other part that has me curious was fishermen in deep waters finding spears of freshly speared fish. I am not sure what the government was trying to cover up, but have a feeling it had nothing to do with Mermaid/half human type creatures, but the facts of the destruction they did to the marine life after their sonic detonations. They are planning on a lot more of this recently and this will harm and destroy a lot of marine mammals and possibly other aquatic creatures. To the trolls on here how about posting something a little more intelligent than bonking a mermaid, LOL
Nonsense! Why, back in the late 80's, when I was a paladin operating out of Waterdeep on Toril with my wizard & cleric pals, my key informant on pirate activities was a beautiful red-haired mermaid!
It was a long time ago now but I remember it so it must be true...
have a special cabin on the Ark, or were they towed ?...
Henri
PS : And what about Esther Williams ? And wet T-shirts ? Has the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also denied their existence ? These chaps are destroying my childhood and youth !...