Poll: Mermaids

[Yopaz]

Science lecturer answer:
if you want a slightly more scientific answer the answer is, it's possible but the odds are astronomical that we haven't seen one / filmed one or dug up it's bones yet. ( ie observed it, or it's effect on the environment )
-see how dogmatic science can be? it's the same answer but with bigger words. 'we don't know'

Actually no. If you want a science lecturers answer you with any weight towards evolutionary biology you will get the answer that it can't possibly exist due to the constraints that prevents evolution from going in certain directions. Mermaids just aren't possible regardless because they have features not present in either lineage of creatures we could list as relatives to mermaids and they contain structures believed to have one common ancestor. Evolution doesn't mix two creatures in order to get one.

 

[DoPo]

Do they still count as mermaids once they lose their virginity and aren't maidens anymore?

Cause otherwise that's very backwards.

Don't worry, they just wear this

It's all good.

It is unusual how two indigenous cultures on opposite sides of the world have an identical mythical mountain ape creature, the two first nation cultures mythology for these creatures is thousands of years old. It is almost impossible for them to have ever been in contact so why have such a close myth for these creatures?

Cultures among the world have lots of similarities in folklore - creatures that go out at night, vampires/other walking corpses, the bogeyman, magic, gods, spirits, etc. Even ones that didn't have contact, yes. Why are yeti/bigfoot different than all the rest?

 

[2fish]

Well they could be very very small? More than likely they do not exist, but humans have been wrong before.

Seriously Sirens, mermen and Mermaids were pretty scary back in the day.

As an aside, sirens used to be coastal harpies or somesuch, later on they became mermaids.

I wish I could lure sailors to their deaths

Go into bar talk to sailors, lure them into traffic. Modern Siren!

Editied for stupidity

 

[The Lugz]

Science lecturer answer:
if you want a slightly more scientific answer the answer is, it's possible but the odds are astronomical that we haven't seen one / filmed one or dug up it's bones yet. ( ie observed it, or it's effect on the environment )
-see how dogmatic science can be? it's the same answer but with bigger words. 'we don't know'

Actually no. If you want a science lecturers answer you with any weight towards evolutionary biology you will get the answer that it can't possibly exist due to the constraints that prevents evolution from going in certain directions. Mermaids just aren't possible regardless because they have features not present in either lineage of creatures we could list as relatives to mermaids and they contain structures believed to have one common ancestor. Evolution doesn't mix two creatures in order to get one.

that's a good answer, and no, i do not mean to downplay any of the experts knowledge in any fields there are many smart people out there yes you're likely correct they would have much more to say on the subject.
including how the animal would kill itself by using the vein constricting methods of temperature management that most fish employ as human biology is not compatible with this and that human skin would be too easily damaged and waterlogged if in a sea environment for extended periods but potatoes potatoes we cant prove it as fact beyond saying it's impossible.

However,
'truth' and 'fiction' were my main points here not specifically answering the question because any answer i can give could be countered by 'well obviously they evolved hardened veins like dolphins'

the point is we cant give a factual answer, Ie, one that is a true trusted belief backed by knowledge.
it ends up an unsolvable argument much in the vein of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

#Edit, just copy paste the whole thing, the link's broken and i cba to fix it with markup right now

what we can say, as because many of the things are ludicrous that it's existence is extremely unlikely as very special conditions would need to be met for it to exist.
you're correct in saying a reasonable person can see there is logical truth in this, even if we can't prove it.

 

[Product Placement]

"Mermaids: A Body Found"

The silliest part of this mockumentry is that they couldn't even make the so called "government cover up conspiracy" hold ground against the tiniest of scrutiny.

I'm talking about the follow up show called "Mermaids: The New Evidence", which aired few days ago. In it, a "Danish scientist" who was hired by the "Icelandic Geological Center" to search for oil of the coast of Greenland was showing videos of Mermaids who he had encountered while sailing around in a glass submarine. Of course, once they found out about the mermaids, the Icelandic government didn't want them to release this info because they stood to lose allot of money by having this place not recommended for drilling.

Eh... Greenland is owned by Denmark. Why the fuck would Iceland be hiring Danish geologists to search for oil inside Danish jurisdiction? Why hire Danish geologists? The Scandinavian country that has all the offshore oil drilling experience is Norway. You wanna Iceland is doing today? Conducting oil search, within Icelandic jurisdiction, using Norwegian experts!

I mean Jesus. If you're spending all that money on the CG effects, fucking bother the ultra basic fact checking while you're writing the damn script.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

My question is, if mermaids or mermen exist would you be willing to try sexual activity with them?
Yes, I do have strange fetishes.

 

[Thaluikhain]

My question is, if mermaids or mermen exist would you be willing to try sexual activity with them?
Yes, I do have strange fetishes.

Why not? If they are people same as anyone else, it's just be having sex with someone that had a tail instead of legs.

Unless you mean cause they are secret and you'd have to make sure nobody ever found out.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

My question is, if mermaids or mermen exist would you be willing to try sexual activity with them?
Yes, I do have strange fetishes.

Why not? If they are people same as anyone else, it's just be having sex with someone that had a tail instead of legs.

Unless you mean cause they are secret and you'd have to make sure nobody ever found out.

I just figured some people would be scared by the shear idea of having intimate relations with something "human" yet "not human." I guess this question would also apply to aliens as well.

I can't even be sure if I'm asking the question in a juvenile way or a serious way, I guess I'm just curious.

 

[Thaluikhain]

My question is, if mermaids or mermen exist would you be willing to try sexual activity with them?
Yes, I do have strange fetishes.

Why not? If they are people same as anyone else, it's just be having sex with someone that had a tail instead of legs.

Unless you mean cause they are secret and you'd have to make sure nobody ever found out.

I just figured some people would be scared by the shear idea of having intimate relations with something "human" yet "not human." I guess this question would also apply to aliens as well.

I can't even be sure if I'm asking the question in a juvenile way or a serious way, I guess I'm just curious.

TBH, there's lots of issues in regards to people having sex with the disabled, it's viewed as even disgusting or a fetish by very many people. I'd imagine the same sort of thing would apply.

 

[Anezay]

Mermaids are more closely related to bigfoot than us on the evolutionary chain, but we anthropomorphize them to be just like us with fins.

 

[direkiller]

The evolution of mermaids is in fact impossible no matter how you look at it.

As fish evolving human characters or a hominid evolving fish characters. Neither of these things are possible.

Believe me or not, but it can all be found in this book. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolution-Douglas-Futuyma/dp/0878932232/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1369913401&sr=8-5&keywords=evolution

It's a myth and honestly I think How I Met Your Mother actually explained a more viable hypothesis to the origin of them than anyone in this thread.

Now you might say that you should be careful about debunking myths because because of the discovery of such creatures as giant octopus and squids confirming a lot of the old stories. It should also be mentioned that the sea serpent stories are believed to be early discoveries of a giant herring. If only it had phycoerythin pigments... (cookie to the first one to get this one)

You'll also note that sea mammals like whales and dolphins don't have gills, they breathe air same as we do. Evolving gills evidently is no small thing.

Actually, there's a hypothesis claiming that for us to evolve gills is impossible. The hypothesis states that a if a complex structure is removed through evolution it can never come back through further evolution. I can't remember the name of the hypothesis though. I just wanted to add to what you said, what you said was quite good as it was.

Dollo's law of irreversibly

if you can adapt lungs to breath oxygen in water it would never be gills, and they would never be fishes.

 

[hooblabla6262]

Anyone else see that video of the "mermaid" that looks more like an elongated seal?
It was posted on facebook, which is how I figured out about the mockumentary on Discovery.

Anyhoo, mermaids that are half fish and half human are silly impossibilities. But an elongated seal "mermaid" is totally within reason.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

TBH, there's lots of issues in regards to people having sex with the disabled, it's viewed as even disgusting or a fetish by very many people. I'd imagine the same sort of thing would apply.

I had either completely forgotten about that or blanked it out somehow. Puts a new perspective.

 

[Yopaz]

Snip

It pains me to cut away the content of your post since it was very well written and made me understand your line of reasoning.

Let me introduce this by explaining where I am coming from here. I am not what you would call an expert in evolution, I have had one university course and I have written one article debating the possible evolution of sex. The main thing I learned during that course is that I don't understand evolution and that I never have and probably never will. I am telling you this because it's so easy to lie about your educational background which makes all internet debates worthless since there's always someone who has taken a doctorate on the subject that's being discussed.

Putting that behind us, yes you're right. It is in fact impossible to prove mermaids don't exist, I or any marine biologist can't prove that it doesn't exist any more than you can prove that I never studied biology and that I am just an internet troll working at Burger King because I don't have any skills and did bad in school (not a great analogy since the claim of my education is technically falsifiable). We can say with 100% certainty that it can't exist, but actually proving something doesn't exist doesn't.

Now this next part isn't really relevant to our discussion, I consider that one to be won by you, but a little information about why the existence of mermaids is impossible.


Now moving on from that I just want to add a little to what you just said. I'll try to keep it at a simple enough level so I wont accidentally feed you wrong information.

I like that you mentioned temperature regulation and skin making it really unlikely that it exists, but that's not that much of an evolutionary constraint. Whales and dolphins have also evolved from land creatures and adapted to a life partially under water, so the skin isn't impossible. However their method of swimming is in fact enough to say they're not related to fish without comparing any of the other physiological aspects. Because it has evolved form a land species its movement patterns have evolved from one adapted to land. A whale is galloping under water which is unique. A penguin is flying under water which is unique to birds. A mermaid supposedly swims like a fish which would mean it has never evolved on land. While evolving water resistant skin isn't impossible I think there's an evolutionary constraint preventing it from developing both fish scales and skin at the same time, again, not entirely sure about this one.

If we ignore the part above and change our hypothesis that mermaids never were land dwelling creatures and developed in the ocean and we pretend that it's possible for them to develop water proof skin and hair (hair is unique to mammals, but we ignore that for now). There would be the selective constraint of developing arms. Arms is a structure that would always be disadvantageous in water which is why whales have lost their back limbs and modified their fore limbs after they went back in there.

Now I am probably missing something more here, but this is at least a part of why mermaids can't occur through evolution.

 

[Gorrath]

The evolution of mermaids is in fact impossible no matter how you look at it.

As fish evolving human characters or a hominid evolving fish characters. Neither of these things are possible.

Believe me or not, but it can all be found in this book. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolution-Douglas-Futuyma/dp/0878932232/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1369913401&sr=8-5&keywords=evolution

It's a myth and honestly I think How I Met Your Mother actually explained a more viable hypothesis to the origin of them than anyone in this thread.

Now you might say that you should be careful about debunking myths because because of the discovery of such creatures as giant octopus and squids confirming a lot of the old stories. It should also be mentioned that the sea serpent stories are believed to be early discoveries of a giant herring. If only it had phycoerythin pigments... (cookie to the first one to get this one)

You'll also note that sea mammals like whales and dolphins don't have gills, they breathe air same as we do. Evolving gills evidently is no small thing.

Actually, there's a hypothesis claiming that for us to evolve gills is impossible. The hypothesis states that a if a complex structure is removed through evolution it can never come back through further evolution. I can't remember the name of the hypothesis though. I just wanted to add to what you said, what you said was quite good as it was.

Dollo's law of irreversibly

if you can adapt lungs to breath oxygen in water it would never be gills, and they would never be fishes.

Much as whales came about as an evolution of horses. They didn't re-evolve gills, but rather formed new structures based around the anatomical systems they already had. Unfortunately many people don't even have a rudimentary understanding of the evolutionary process, let alone the slightly more sophisticated rules that exist along side the basic theory.

OT: Voted no, given that we have no reason to believe that such a creature does exist and lots of reasons not to.

 

[Thaluikhain]

However their method of swimming is in fact enough to say they're not related to fish without comparing any of the other physiological aspects.

Really? I'd never heard that.

Why then have whales and dolphins evolved similar shapes to fish and ichtyosaurs? They have horizontal tails, though.

 

[KeyMaster45]

so recentley, i went on a discovery binge and came upon a series about mermaids and self proclaimed evidence of wich blah blah blah. i was really into it, until every video they showed as evidence was incredibly fake! i mean what the hell. if there is evidence of this fairytale, then what try and pull a fast one with the same computer graphics you've been using the entire show. what BS is the discoverey channel trying to prove. i mean, ive got a open mnd and all, but hell, you can tell these kind of things from miles away. I want you guys to explain this nonsense to me.

I took a class about a couple semester's ago about how big foot, conspiracy theories, and myths in general take hold; as well as the logical-fallacies they use in their arguments of truth. I don't recommend it for anyone who was emotionally crushed at the revelation of Santa's non-existence.

Point is this exact series was brought up to show how even with clearly fake evidence (that mind you is known to be fake and is said to be as such by the Discovery channel in the credits of the show; albeit in very small print) there are still people who will rally around it and proclaim it to be true. It's utter bat-shit insanity. We were shown a number of websites that argue that everything in the documentary is real and the government is forcing the Discovery channel to lie that it's fake. It...well it's all very sad to see the arguments over "found iPhone" footage that was clearly taken using an HD camera, steady-cam, and a 16:9 aspect ratio, and thing in it that prove it's real.

Why did the Discovery channel do this? Shit and giggles as we were told. They did another special about the discovery of dragons frozen in the darkest depths of Sibera. They did it as a thought experiment as to what would the mer-species be like biologically when actual science is applied to the myth. Unfortunately they weren't too concerned with beating people over the head with that fact because it's all clearly very faked. Their estimation of the human capacity for delusion was sorely lacking.

This was all done, of course, before the network was converted into Antique's Roadshow/Dirty Jobs: Redneck Edition.

 

[Yopaz]

However their method of swimming is in fact enough to say they're not related to fish without comparing any of the other physiological aspects.

Really? I'd never heard that.

Why then have whales and dolphins evolved similar shapes to fish and ichtyosaurs? They have horizontal tails, though.

Selection. If they had retained the shape of their ancestral land form they would have been at a disadvantage and gone extinct ages ago. Those who were able to adapt the best are the ones who evolved tails and wide fore limbs to better move in water. Analyzing the movements of their limbs though tells a different tail. Sorry... I couldn't help it...

Personally I thought that was quite mind blowing when I first heard it.

 

[Gatx]

I liked the idea of it, and they told an alright story, but the acting was TERRIBLE, in the first one more so than the second. The two being interview tried WAY to hard to sound like normal people being interviewed and ended up talking in the same slow, with a few awkward pauses like they're trying to come up with what to say, then fast rhythm the entire movie. The context for the second special as a faux news broadcast was also really weird. To my mind there's never been a special live news show created for a specific event so that takes away from the authenticity of it. They should've just continued it with another mockumentary.

Its a mockumentary, and every one of the researchers were paid actors. Just so you know.

Its a hoax, a joke played on you by the discovery channel. Just like the documentary on how dragons existed and how they killed their own babies to maintain "dominance."

Its like April fools, but not in April. They do it every so often to get ratings up.

This is in fact the second time it was shown on the Discovery Channel for Monster Week. The first time it was played, so many people thought it was real that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a few others, ran replies that there is no evidence of mermaids existence.

There was also another one of these mocumentaries from Discovery that did the same thing with dragons.

I am astounded that there are so many people who actually thought these things are real. I enjoy them as mockumentaries, fleshing out the detail of a mythological species in a scientific manner and what, like what was done with zombies in the Zombie Survival Guide, but isn't it painfully obvious that it's not real?

 

[laraghboy]

Hmmm....probably not. Even though evolution throws some pretty unusual stuff together, I just don't see it happening! Some of the mermaid tales, apparently, stem from sightings of manatees and types of ray by sailors....lonely....lonely sailors!

There's a creature from legends here in Ireland called the Merrow. Similar to a siren, except they were found in rivers and lakes. They would lure young men to the water, with no bad intentions, to swim and "dance" with them, under the water, not realizing that men can't breathe like them. They thought that men struggling to breathe was just them dancing...and they always got sad when they stopped. They would cry for the man, and then look for another partner, who wouldn't get tired so easily.

No real point to the story, just slightly interesting!