Do you believe in Mermaids/Merpeople?

[Mermaid Mhara]

Hi guys, I'm sure this thread has probably been done before but I wanted t hear some fresh ideas and discussions so I decided to start my own.

Now the question here is simple, do you believe in REAL Merpeople/Mermaids/Merfolk?

I'm curious to see how many of us actually do :) now I also do not want to hear simple 'yes' or 'no' answers, I'd like to hear why you do, what is your definition of a Mermaid? And how does you believing influence your life in any way...OR why don't you believe? What makes you think that way? etc.

Now, here's my personal opinion on the matter:

Yes, I've always believed in Mer-folk of some sort existing in our world. Why do I believe? I have this thirst to know more, and so far there is as much evidence to prove they do, or DID exist at one point as there is evidence they don't or didn't.

Now, I'm a little confused about my definition of Mer-folk, because I have two ways of thinking.
1) Mer-folk are an actual civilization of highly evolved ocean dwelling creatures who are capable of hiding from us, or have been forced into hiding/extinction nowadays.
2) Mer-Folk are spiritual beings, spirits of the water and the sea similar to Faeries, who can be seen by few but not by all.

My first way of thinking is that an actual living being exists in the sea. Now people always have an answer for this 'but a creature like that couldn't be scientifically possible' blah, blah, blah, YEP we also thought at one point that the Earth was flat and it was scientifically impossible for it to be any other shape, and that it was impossible to build a vehicle that can fly, or that creatures such as the platypus was 'too weird to be real'.
Basically, Science changes on a daily rate and we are constantly finding new things. Merpeople may not be literally 'half human - half fish' they may be a COMPLETELY new species to us, with a completely different way of living and functioning than we've ever known.

So I'm open to this idea :)

But on the other hand my magic believing side goes 'maybe they're just creatures of pure energy?' Perhaps they are an image the spirit of the sea or water decides to take when needed to appear to humans or even just for fun. This is more my spiritual side and my belief in Faeries due to experiences I've had personally coming out though.

So yes I do believe in Mer-folk but I'm not 100% sure what type of Mer-folk I believe in yet.

What about you guys? :) Discuss!

[MerAnthony]

Yes I do believe for the simple fact that the earth is 3/4 water an only 1/3 has really been explored. Also take into account that over the centuries that so many cultures in indefferent countries have mermaids on tablets or paintings or something. That have not been in contact with the U.S. . Mermaids have not been proven they exist or do not exist. So no one can really say if they do or not. I thin that they are afraid of us because our country is so judgemental of things that they do not understand. Like take how we are treated whn we put our tails on an go swimming. People just don't understand an I don't think that will ever change.

[Mermaid Jaffa]

I like the idea of Aquatic Apes theory like in the fake documentary, Mermaids the body found.

I have even designed a tail after their paddle tails, though I haven't decided what color I'd like it to be.

So to answer your question, yes I do. After all like Anthony said, there are still lots of undiscovered places in the world.

[MermanZen]

Yes, like Ireneho my curiosity grew with each passing day after watching that documentary. although fake I strongly believe that there is some form of MerFolk out there that we just dot know of. these once just normal fairytale creatures have now reached the surface of human thought and imagination. if anything is true in his world it must be these allusive MerFolk, the sea is still a mystery to us and the secrets and creatures within it is only the beginning.

no matter what you believe in this subject just know that you'll never find the answer through doubt

[Mermaid Enhydrina]

I'm gonna say yes, mostly I do believe there's some kind of merfolk creature out there. Sometimes my skepticism gets in the way and I get all sorts of confused. :P
Anyway, like you I go back and forth between the "natural" mer idea and the "fey/magick-y" mers.
I will laugh when they actually do find REAL evidence of some kind of mers. You know, after I'd stopped crying from excitement. Hehe :)

[Mermaid Sirenia]

Yeah I do without a doubt. Close to 90% of the ocean is undiscovered. And hundreds of years ago, before countries or continents had any contact with each other, most of them had stories of mermaids. I don't think the entire would could come up with the same exact thing if it was fake?



~Mermaid Sirenia~

[Echidna]

This is a tricky subject, especially if your argument for their existence stems from legend.

I've been obsessed with myth and legends for a long time, because I think they are true, but people didn't necessarily know what they saw and thus the legend was born.
In other words, one needs to get to the first source of the myth and find out what it was all about, and THEN it can be used as evidence.

Example:
the Greeks knew an animal that was of giant size, had wings, a beak, but a tail and big paws.
They called it gryphon, and they had evidence because there are tons of said animal's bones to be found in Greece.

Now, today palaeontologists have a much better understanding of bones than the ancient people did.
The creature is indeed huge and had a long, sturdy tail, and big feet.
It also had a beak, but not the beak of a bird or eagle.
And what the Greeks mistook for a wing's base, was in fact a bone shield this creature possessed.

So, while the legend is right in a way, the bones were interpreted wrong.
Gryphons didn't exist; the Protoceratops however did.

There are tons of mythical creatures from all ancient cultures which can in a similar way be re-identified today.

So, merfolk.
No, I don't think an actual people out there exist.
I firmly believe mermaids all over the world were something else mistaken for seapeople.

Note also that mermaids differ a lot from country to country.
Some are very human, come on land and often marry a dude they have children with.
These kinds of "mermaids" almost certainly were pearl divers, who were almost unknown in Europe due to the church's practice of persecuting and killing working women as witches.
(You can find a long and conclusive article on this on the web. I also linked it here somewhere.)

In other countries, "mermaids" are lake and river dwellers who are fairy-like and said to be drowned souls
(especially in eastern Europe).
In western Europe, they're also fairy-like lake and river dwellers, just without the soul connotation.

In many, many cases, mermaids do not possess a tail at all, especially if they are of the fairy kind.

To explain where the idea of fae folk and fae mermaids comes from, whole books would need to be written,
so let's just say: no, I don't think either spiritual or real merfolk do exist, because I'm pretty sure I know where the ideas come from and people misunderstood what they saw.

However, I can say I really wish they did exist. :p

[Mermaid Adriel]

Agree with Ireneho and Zen about Aquatic Apes.

[malinghi]

I'm surprised that so many people here believe in merfolk. I really wish they were real too, but as cool as it would be if they existed there's no evidence for it, and plenty of evidence against it.

To clarify, I'm not saying that they definitely don't exist, because that isn't something that can be proven. But I can objectively say that the likelihood they exist is as small as every other fantastic creature, like centaurs and fairies.

Also, the idea that 'because the majority of the ocean is unexplored the possibility of merfolk remains high' is a logical fallacy. Things should not be presumed to exist just because we have not seen otherwise. A good example of this is Russell's Teapot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot).

[Rogue Siren]

This is a tricky subject, especially if your argument for their existence stems from legend.

I've been obsessed with myth and legends for a long time, because I think they are true, but people didn't necessarily know what they saw and thus the legend was born.
In other words, one needs to get to the first source of the myth and find out what it was all about, and THEN it can be used as evidence.

Example:
the Greeks knew an animal that was of giant size, had wings, a beak, but a tail and big paws.
They called it gryphon, and they had evidence because there are tons of said animal's bones to be found in Greece.

Now, today palaeontologists have a much better understanding of bones than the ancient people did.
The creature is indeed huge and had a long, sturdy tail, and big feet.
It also had a beak, but not the beak of a bird or eagle.
And what the Greeks mistook for a wing's base, was in fact a bone shield this creature possessed.

So, while the legend is right in a way, the bones were interpreted wrong.
Gryphons didn't exist; the Protoceratops however did.

There are tons of mythical creatures from all ancient cultures which can in a similar way be re-identified today.

So, merfolk.
No, I don't think an actual people out there exist.
I firmly believe mermaids all over the world were something else mistaken for seapeople.

Note also that mermaids differ a lot from country to country.
Some are very human, come on land and often marry a dude they have children with.
These kinds of "mermaids" almost certainly were pearl divers, who were almost unknown in Europe due to the church's practice of persecuting and killing working women as witches.
(You can find a long and conclusive article on this on the web. I also linked it here somewhere.)

In other countries, "mermaids" are lake and river dwellers who are fairy-like and said to be drowned souls
(especially in eastern Europe).
In western Europe, they're also fairy-like lake and river dwellers, just without the soul connotation.

In many, many cases, mermaids do not possess a tail at all, especially if they are of the fairy kind.

To explain where the idea of fae folk and fae mermaids comes from, whole books would need to be written,
so let's just say: no, I don't think either spiritual or real merfolk do exist, because I'm pretty sure I know where the ideas come from and people misunderstood what they saw.

However, I can say I really wish they did exist. :p

Very informative! :D Thanks

[PearlieMae]

I don't believe in the existence of mermaids in the classic half human/half fish sense, and Mermaids, The Body Found show pretty ridiculous, I do, however, put a lot of stock in the Aquatic Ape theory put forward by Elaine Morgan, where modern humans probably spent a good amount of evolutionary time living off of shallow seas and tide pools.

Briefly, because I'm in my phone and it's a bitch to type, and in no particular order, our flexible spines, our ability to excrete excess salt, the hydrodynamic pattern of body hair, the development of language to communicate over distances, the musculature of our noses to close our nostrils, our dilute urine and feces, lack of fossil and tool record from living near tidal waters, sea mammals such as dolphins having a skeletal structure that suggests that they once were land based but returned to the sea...I don't believe humans had tails, but that there could have been a species between humans and dolphins (merdolphs?) whose final existence overlapped homo sapiens enough to give birth to the mermaid mythos.

Forgive my typonese, but I'm leaving for the pool and don't have time to edit for spelling! ;)

[MerAnthony]

I think Malinghi hit it on the nose. Yes the possablity may be very small that they do exist but you really can't rule it out that they don't. They have been finding creatures lately that they have thought to have been extinct have resurfaced an are now being studied. So however small it may be mermads may exist somewhere.

[selkie13]

What's that saying, we know more about space than we do the oceans of the Earth. Wouldn't surprise me if there where merpeople, but even if they don't exist the world has us instead ;P


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[malinghi]

I'm surprised that so many people here believe in merfolk. I really wish they were real too, but as cool as it would be if they existed there's no evidence for it, and plenty of evidence against it.

To clarify, I'm not saying that they definitely don't exist, because that isn't something that can be proven. But I can objectively say that the likelihood they exist is as small as every other fantastic creature, like centaurs and fairies.

Also, the idea that 'because the majority of the ocean is unexplored the possibility of merfolk remains high' is a logical fallacy. Things should not be presumed to exist just because we have not seen otherwise. A good example of this is Russell's Teapot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot).


I think Malinghi hit it on the nose. Yes the possablity may be very small that they do exist but you really can't rule it out that they don't. They have been finding creatures lately that they have thought to have been extinct have resurfaced an are now being studied. So however small it may be mermads may exist somewhere.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that there is no evidence for merpeople and they almost certainly don't exist. In fact, I'm going to revise my position from saying that it is staggeringly unlikely that they exist, to saying that it is more or less impossible.

Because there is so little oxygen saturated in water, only cold blooded creatures with low oxygen demands like fish can breathe that oxygen. Those oxygen levels can't support more advanced forms of life with well developed brains required for human levels of intelligence. Also, there are no reliable mermaid sightings. There were mermaid sightings in the past, but now that we have the most advanced ocean monitoring technology in history and are fishing at dangerously high yields that produce tons of bycatch, way more than at any time in history, we haven't seen a single one. And if someone were to claim that we haven't seen them because mermaids live in deep water, then that's an admission that all the mermaids ever sighted by sailors, which were at surface, were not real. There is no evidence for merfolk, and based on everything we know about biology, the ocean can't support that kind of life.

[Anahita]

I'm going to agree with malinghi and say no. I really don't think that merfolk that we traditionally think of as merfolk exist. I think throwing the "but we don't know all that much about the ocean!" defense doesn't accomplish anything worthwhile either....

I know dugongs exist, and I'm comfortable believing those creatures probably played a bit of a role in the myths, so in that sense, and that sense alone I believe mermaids "exist". But asking if I believe mermaids as a human top with a tail exist is a lot like asking me if I believe in people with bird or insect wings (we call them "pari" in farsi, but I think in English you distinguish them by their wing types as angels and faeries) existing.

I'm a fan of the Aquatic Ape Theory, but not to explain mermaids; to explain why humans, of all the primates, are so freakishly different from even our closest ape relatives.

[Arella]

It would be awesome if they were real but no. I think we are the closest things to mermaids/mermen that exist.

[Mermaid Jaffa]

It they are out there, they won't look like the half fish half human that we are all familiar with. I think that considering that they live in water 100% of the time, their bodies would've evolved ways to deal with their environment, they won't look anything like a human. Would be more fish like or maybe some new kind of mammal species.

[Mermaid Kelda]

Would be more fish like or maybe some new kind of mammal species.
If they're mammals I think we would have picked them up be now. Fish is plausible, but like Malinghi said, they'd be unrecognisable to us and not capable of human intelligence. So, essentially, they wouldn't be merfolk.

I think the only way you can argue for their existence is with a belief in magic, which is a whole other kettle of fish anyway :P

[Merman Arion]

I'm surprised that so many people here believe in merfolk. I really wish they were real too, but as cool as it would be if they existed there's no evidence for it, and plenty of evidence against it.

To clarify, I'm not saying that they definitely don't exist, because that isn't something that can be proven. But I can objectively say that the likelihood they exist is as small as every other fantastic creature, like centaurs and fairies.

Also, the idea that 'because the majority of the ocean is unexplored the possibility of merfolk remains high' is a logical fallacy. Things should not be presumed to exist just because we have not seen otherwise.


It would be awesome if they were real but no. I think we are the closest things to mermaids/mermen that exist.

I agree with both of you. I love mermaids but I do not believe in them. I need concrete things to believe and without actual proof, I just won't. Although It doesn't stop me from enjoying being a merman and a part of this community.

[SeaGlass Siren]

I believe that the mermaids were really korean pearl divers. So in a sense yes they do exist. Maids of the ocean who scout for scallops and pearls and have the amazing ability to Hold their breath underwater. The men oddly enough cant hold their breath for that long and their bodies can't handle cold very well. But ladies with fishtails? No. I think the European sailors thought "well how can that beeee, they must be half fish! it's impossible to breath hold for that long"

[SeaGlass Siren]

I also think they slipped on sealskin so they can glide in the water better. Also most of the time they were naked because of the clothes dragging in the water. But that's just my opinion