On-screen text at the beginning of the show told audiences, “The scientists in this film are speaking on camera for the first time,” but those “scientists” were really actors. The “evidence” for mermaids that was presented in the show was invented by script-writers and special effects artists. Mermaids: The Body Found looked and felt like a documentary, but it was actually a work of make-believe. He wasn’t even a real person, but an invented television character. Paul Robertson” was not a scientist at all. Paul Robertson seemed impossible to ignore. In particular, the sincerity radiating from NOAA scientist Dr. There was even a camera-phone video of a living mermaid stranded on an American beach! From the deep-voiced narrator to the compelling personal testimony, the show hammered home the unbelievable message that mermaids exist after all. The on-screen scientists said they found the gruesome remains of a mer-person inside the stomach of a large shark. Not only are mermaids real, claimed the program, but they are an evolutionary offshoot of the human family tree!Ĭould that be right? It certainly seemed like it. government scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA) looked straight into the camera and told the public about incredible evidence for the existence of mermaids. Three and a half million viewers watched in astonishment as people identified as U.S. Then, in 2012, the Animal Planet television channel aired a documentary-style program called Mermaids: The Body Found. But people in the United States and other industrialized countries generally think of mermaids as completely imaginary fantasy creatures like dragons, gremlins, or leprechauns. Monster hunters have remained interested in mermaid-like creatures such as the Ri, and mermaid sightings are still sometimes reported in countries in Africa and elsewhere around the world. Perhaps out of fantasy, or maybe( just maybe) Animal Planet is on to something.Junior Skeptic 48 cover. The mermaid legend has endured for thousands of years. However, because she worked so hard to earn a soul, she is granted one and becomes a 'daughter of the air'. She sadly does not win the prince's love in the original version and throws herself back into the ocean. She trades her tongue for her new legs, and must find true love's kiss, otherwise she will die broken hearted and turn into sea foam. In the ordinal version written in 1837, the little mermaid exchanges her fins for feet in order to obtain an eternal human soul. However, Ariel, the red-headed innocent potrayed in Disney's adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, "The Little Mermaid" may be everyone' overriding image of a sea siren. Begun to experience the first effects of love." He wrote, "Her long green hair imparted to her an original character by no means unattractive.
They also noted English explorer John Smith claimed to have seen a mermaid in the Caribbean in 1614. The Underwater Times noted that in 1493, while sailing near the Dominican Republic, Christopher Columbus described in his log some "female forms" that "rose high out of the sea, but were not as beautiful as they are represented."
Of course the stories also could have arisen from the active imaginations of explorers and their desperate need for human contact. "Usually these legends of singing sirens were made by sailors as explanations for why they were led astray," said Natalie Underberg, a folklorist at the University of Central Florida, told the Underwater Times. Atargatis took the form of half-human, half-fish.įrom here, the legend of the mermaid moved to a haunting image of sirens calling out for sailors in the sea. Shamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the water could not conceal her divine beauty.
According to the legend, the goddess Atargatis loved a mortal shepherd and unintentionally killed him. The first mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, around 1000 BC. While Animal Planet went for a creep, alien-like look for their merpeople, the mythical version of mermaids in folklore often held that mermaids were of superior beauty. One of these videos claims that two boys found a mermaid on the beach in 2008: The show featured several 'found footage' videos and interviews with people who claim to have seen mermaids first hand. The special, a part of Animal Planet's Monster Week, has drawn both praise and criticism for its realistic look at what could be lurking in the deep. The Animal Planet mockumentary premiered on Sunday and had viewers asking, 'what if mermaids really are out there?' "Mermaids: The Body Found" took over the airwaves last weekend.
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