Are mermaids real?

Answer 1

yes :)

Answer 2

Yes I believe so....my parents are both of Caribbean descent my father born in Trinidad and my mother Haitian. In Haiti we call them Moi(mo-ee), they say that at night when men go to the beach they hear a voice. They say if you hear a women's voice DON'T GO because it's the mermaid calling them to be their salve. I know it sounds a little crazy...but it's true.

Some fishermen chop the human part off and sell it in fish markets. It is very good!

Answer 3

I doubt it very seriously. Maybe a sailor being on the sea for a long time and been sex starved for so long might have come up this this mermaid tale and it got the wind. No truth to this mermaid story.

Answer 4

i am doing a research based on mermaids i really wana find out if they are real (exists)

Answer 5

No, But wouldn't it be cool if they were?? a long time ago,Sailors used to call Manatees mermaids, but other than that I don't think they truely exist....But I'd love it....Disney's "The Little Mermaid" was, and still is my favorite movie..

Answer 6

I still believe in the one time presence of most , so called, mythical creatures. Unicorns, trolls faeries, Mermaids etc. If any still exist they are just smart enough to stay out of the sight of man.

Answer 7

yes mermaid are real even know people say they don't believe mermaid exist i still believe because in the country call haiti they exist.

Answer 8

Yes...ever heard of the Fiji mermaid? (damn it's ugly!!)http://www.tahamilton.com/11_Museum_of_the_Weird/barnum2.htm
P.S. I should at least get a thumbs up for posting a link to an interesting pic (even if it is a fake!)

Answer 9

Hang on a second - Terry is not quite correct.

For example - Whales and dolphins are two examples of 'mammals' that exist as fish-like creatures. Seals, Sea Lions etc... there are many animals that exist in the water as mammals / fish-like beings.

I think it's possible - I like to think that I was one in another life. Once I'm in the pool you can't get me out.

Answer 10

seriously doubt it as these tales may have been told by sailors after spending to much time on the open sea without feminine company

Answer 11

Facts
Scientists do not think it’s possible for a creature to exist that is half mammal and half fish, the two species are simply too far apart in terms of vertebrate’s evolution. The popular scientific theory is that manatees or sea cows are what some sailors have seen and, due to long voyages at sea and malnutrition, have mistaken them for human-like creatures. The manatees are found in coastal regions and have a fish-like tail, but they could never be described as having a comely face. Even though we know very little about our oceans, with such a tiny portion of it explored; scientists still believe it unlikely mermaids are creatures yet to be discovered. They agree that there are many animals that we don’t know about yet and sometimes creatures are discovered; like the Coelacanth, ("see-la-kanth"), that 400 million year old "living fossil" fish, pre-dating the dinosaurs by millions of years and once thought to have gone extinct with them, 65 million years ago, the Coelacanth with its "missing link" "proto legs" was "discovered" alive and well in 1938 at the mouth of the Chalumna River on the east coast of South Africa. But the truth is, say the scientists, that the deep-sea areas have only become inhabited fairly recently in geological terms; so the likelihood of anything popping up from mythology is pretty low.

So does this mean that the mermaids of myth and legend have never existed? Some argue that there is a link between the Sirens of Homer’s Odyssey and mythological mermaids; the only problem with this is that the Mediterranean Sea, where the Odyssey is set, completely dried up around 10 million years ago and only started to refill recently during the times of mankind. In early Homer references the sea was as dry as a desert. This means that ancient Western stories from the Mediterranean cannot have creatures of this kind in them brought over from ancient times. But the interesting thing about mermaids is that stories about them come from all over the world, from different countries and cultures; as if they are part of the human collective memory. In West Africa, Mami Wata is a Vodou goddess of the sea who appears in mermaid shape; she is kind to women and often blesses them with children, but has special sympathies for barren women. The Babylonian God Oannes is said to be the first recorded creature part man, part fish; Lord of the Waters.

There have been links with human women and mermaids for a long time; the pain a mermaid goes through when she wishes to become human has been compared to the pain of menstruation and childbirth. Inthe Hans Christian Anderson story, The Little Mermaid, she has to bear the pain of 8 oysters being attached to her tail at the age of 15 to denote her rank, that she has come of age. Later when the witch grants her wish to become human, she has to bear the terrible pain of her tail splitting in two, becoming legs, with every following step feeling like walking on needles and swords. The tail here seems to be symbolic of the female reproductive system. In Melusine the French Medieval tale, Melusine married Raymond of Poitou, she forbid him to see her in the bath one day out of the week. They had children, and some of them had strange features like big teeth. One day he spied on her in the bath, and saw that she was part serpent or fish. This is thought to parallel men’s feelings of being unable to affect the changes women go through, particularly their menstrual cycle. Stories like these may back up what the scientists say, that mermaids do not exist, they could merely be a way of expressing certain human conditions in stories.

Still others argue that we should not discount the similarities of world-spanning mermaid sightings and myths, pervading so many different cultures who express aspects of life in vastly different ways. Mermaids are said to have fairy-like powers, with the ability to grant wishes; some fisherman have believed that spotting a mermaid is a bad omen, yet spotting them has saved their lives by making them steer clear of their intended paths. It could easily be argued, and well believed, that if something can exist with such prominence in the human psyche, the chances are that it is real; mermaids either exist here on Earth and appear when they wish, or live in some other dimension or plain of existence that our collective consciousness remembers.