Do Mermaids Really Exist?

 

Popular belief has it that the legend of mermaids comes from the Manatee. A mermaid (from the Middle English mere in the obsolete sense 'sea' (as in maritime, the Latin mare, "sea") + maid(en)) is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and torso of human female and the tail of a fish
(the male equivalent being known as a merman; gender-neutral plurals could be merpeople or merfolk). Various cultures throughout the world have similar figures, including the Roman God of the Sea, Neptune (similar to Poseidon in Greek mythology) who is often depicted with a fish's tail.

Mermaids were noted in British folklore as both ominous, foretelling disaster, and provoking it. Several variants of the ballad Sir Patrick Spens depict a mermaid speaking to the doomed ships; in some, she tells them they will never see land again, and in others, she claims they are near shore, which they are wise enough to know means the same thing. They can also be a sign of rough weather.

Much like sirens, mermaids would sometimes sing to sailors and enchant them, distracting them from their work and causing them to walk off the deck or cause shipwrecks. Other stories would have them squeeze the life out of drowning men while trying to rescue them. They are also said to take them down to their underwater kingdoms. In Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid it is said that they forget that humans cannot breathe underwater, while others say they drown men out of spite.


The Sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes portrayed in later folklore as mermaid-like; in fact, some languages use the same word for both creatures. Other related types of mythical or legendary creature are water fairies (e.g. various water nymphs) and selkies, animals that can transform themselves from seals to humans.

Some people claim they have seen dead or living mermaids in places like Scotland, Malaysia, British Columbia and Haiti. Two recent Canadian reports took place in the Strait of Georgia.

Prior to the mid 19th century, mariners actually referred to Manatee and Dugongs as "mermaids":

I was fortunate enough to "meet" a manatee in Florida in 2005. We'd been rinsing filleted fish into the harbour and it was probably attracted by the fresh water permeating the saline bay. I have to say, they're not beautiful in the way legend would have us believe, but they're fascinating creatures with pale, hairless mammalian skin - you can imagine one basking in the sun on a beach may well look mildly human from afar. Here are some photos I took at that chance encounter:

 

 

 

 

 

But, after all that's said and done, with "remains" of "mermaids" appearing all over the world, some having been proved as fakes, some not, can we really say conclusively, that mermaids don't exist?: