Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Ariel. No you're not. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: was this an early influence on you? Mermaid wise very
Speaker 1: all the Mermaid from Bttle Mermaid, Little Mermaid. Yeah, actually
Speaker 1: from the hands Christian Anderson, the original tale. Oh you were,
Speaker 1: of course you were. You were old school reading the
Speaker 1: book as a kid, and then well, yeah, and out
Speaker 1: you're harping on and being like, wow, it's not very
Speaker 1: true to the original hands Christian, like, there's none of
Speaker 1: the gore and the awfulness. The Sea Witch. She was
Speaker 1: always my favorite. I think she was. What I remember
Speaker 1: the most is that the Mermaid, whenever she tried to
Speaker 1: walk on her her legs, her newly formed legs, it
Speaker 1: would feel like daggers. Each step would feel like a dagger.
Speaker 1: That really stuck with me. Yeah, that they didn't quite
Speaker 1: captured that in the the actually animated film. My I
Speaker 1: have two sisters, two younger sisters, so growing up they
Speaker 1: were really into a Little Mermaid, and they were also
Speaker 1: really into the movie Splash, Hannah. They loved Splash. Like Splash,
Speaker 1: We splash must have been on our TV like every
Speaker 1: day for like a year. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: splash going on because that features of mermaid and was
Speaker 1: right up their alley. And then there were the mermaid
Speaker 1: barbies were everywhere. They were always hanging out like wet
Speaker 1: haired by the bathtub. So, I mean, and and the
Speaker 1: thing is that the mermaid the myth when you're really
Speaker 1: looking to it, I mean, it's it's old, it's fascinating's
Speaker 1: been running forever and continues um to fascinate modern audiences
Speaker 1: in new ways. Yeah, I mean exactly when those things
Speaker 1: that has captured our imaginations through folklore, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's probably a little tiny part in all of us
Speaker 1: that wished that mermaids were an actual thing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: so why aren't we talking about mer folk? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: we recently did an episode about the centaur Um in
Speaker 1: which we we looked little, you know, a little bit
Speaker 1: at the folk uh tales that gave us the centaur
Speaker 1: and and talked to a little bit about where these
Speaker 1: ideas come from, you know, why to win, why do
Speaker 1: we as humans decide that we need to think about
Speaker 1: half humans havelf horses? And then we looked at some
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff, some basically comparative anatomy, which which a German
Speaker 1: anatomis said, well, let's see if they're Centaurs obviously don't exist,
Speaker 1: but if they did, how might it work? And it
Speaker 1: serves as an interesting thought experiment into into how uh,
Speaker 1: animals actually work on an anatomical level. It's something called
Speaker 1: speculative biology. Speculative biology. Yeah, so right after we had
Speaker 1: the center, we had a listener right in the name
Speaker 1: was Danelle Danielle. Yeah, yeah, she said, hey, please please
Speaker 1: cover mr Folk. I actually think she called them rfolk specifically.
Speaker 1: And and at the time we're like, okay, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll do our folks. At some point, we weren't in
Speaker 1: a particular hurry, but then Animal Planet did this uh
Speaker 1: an Animal Planet, of course as part of the discovery
Speaker 1: our our our parent company. They did this the show
Speaker 1: about me people, and it was a huge hit. And
Speaker 1: I my sister is like texting me at night saying,
Speaker 1: what's the deal with this Mermaids show? Is? This is
Speaker 1: this legit? And uh? And so we're like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we we probably should go ahead and do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's a what if proposition, This this um this show,
Speaker 1: it's called Mermaids The Body Found Now. It's it's um
Speaker 1: presented in a documentary style fashion, which you know, some
Speaker 1: people weren't crazy about. But to be fair, UM, Animal
Speaker 1: Planet did say that this was a bit of science
Speaker 1: fiction that was you know, based on some scientific theories.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to take the premise of this show
Speaker 1: and and start to tease apart from the things they
Speaker 1: talked about, because it's really interesting how they strung this together. Basically,
Speaker 1: the setup is that it's two thousand and four and
Speaker 1: whales were washing up from a llegal deep water sonar
Speaker 1: emanating from US Navy experiment. Because again, whales and dolphins
Speaker 1: that use the echolocation sound is a very important aspect
Speaker 1: of the way they navigate, the way they communicate. UM,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this in the past. We've talked about
Speaker 1: whales and dolphins and uh, and also about underwater sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so in this fictional account, what they're what they're
Speaker 1: saying is that, you know, the Navy is trying to
Speaker 1: cover up something. UM officials are coming out and has
Speaker 1: that suits looking at these beached whales and and pulling
Speaker 1: in specimens and taking them away. UM. And then the
Speaker 1: remains of a mysterious creature is discovered. So then the
Speaker 1: plotline starts talking about, uh, this this fringe hypothesis called
Speaker 1: the aquatic eight hypothesis, which we'll get into and in
Speaker 1: some people actually that insist that it be called the
Speaker 1: the the aquatic eate theory of citing that the that
Speaker 1: it's not a true scientific hypothesis. But that's kind of
Speaker 1: splitting hairs. Well, some people say it's not a theory,
Speaker 1: it's a hypothesis, or it's just an idea. Um, So
Speaker 1: we probably leave it at that. But then they also
Speaker 1: go into not only this aquatic ape idea, but these
Speaker 1: unidentified sound profiles from the ocean, which we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: like the bloop. And then in the in the plot
Speaker 1: of this show, the mysterious body is autopsied and lo
Speaker 1: and behold they find pelvic bone. Actually it's kind of
Speaker 1: half autopsy if it's half here exactly the torso um.
Speaker 1: So the pelic bones are found and hands are discovered,
Speaker 1: and so then it becomes this question as well as
Speaker 1: then maybe trying to cover up the fact that they
Speaker 1: were using this at illegal sonar system or that there's
Speaker 1: a creature that we are a new species that we
Speaker 1: just don't know about. Mm hmm. So using that is
Speaker 1: our backdrop today, we thought, well, why not talk about um,
Speaker 1: you know, this this idea of these strange noises in
Speaker 1: the ocean, or the aquatic ape theory, or even the
Speaker 1: Mermaid RelA of your. Yeah, so let's start with the
Speaker 1: Mermaid relics of your because that's the part I really enjoy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the I love the the the
Speaker 1: a hypothesis as well. But I think it's been important
Speaker 1: to sort of take a step back and look at
Speaker 1: the Mermaid myth and you know where it comes from
Speaker 1: and uh and some of the more interesting variations on it. Um.
Speaker 1: We can't put an actual date on the Mermaid because
Speaker 1: the Mermaid is one of those those stories that has
Speaker 1: existed since time out of mind. As long as humans
Speaker 1: have lived near the sea and struggled really hard to
Speaker 1: live with the sea to go out and and harvest
Speaker 1: its riches. We've we've dreamed of people and or quasi
Speaker 1: people who can do it naturally that live in the ocean,
Speaker 1: and uh and and we've we've speculated about the mysteries
Speaker 1: that this would entail. Um. You see a lot of
Speaker 1: mermaids in in UH in Scottish, Welsh and Irish tales.
Speaker 1: In the UH. In the Scottish and Welsh tales particularly, um,
Speaker 1: you might rescue a mermaid and the mermaid would share
Speaker 1: the secrets of various herbal cures with humans, and then
Speaker 1: sometimes they would marry humans, but the web footed offspring
Speaker 1: would invariably return to the ocean. And and and you see
Speaker 1: this as a common theme too, because you know you
Speaker 1: have some lonely men out there catching fish, and that
Speaker 1: their minds may start to wander and they might think, wow,
Speaker 1: you know what, have I met somebody out here? The
Speaker 1: chances are slim, and she might be part fish, but
Speaker 1: maybe I can find true love, if not on land,
Speaker 1: then at sea. They didn't have mermaid match dot com
Speaker 1: back then. No, not yet, not then, but but hopefully,
Speaker 1: especially with this series being successful, we can start hooking
Speaker 1: people up with mermaids and merfolk and merman uh. During
Speaker 1: medieval times, the mermaid was considered to be an agent
Speaker 1: of the devil in a symbol of the seat and
Speaker 1: get this the way this would work. Often you'd see
Speaker 1: this in you know and carving, so often church related stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: you would see the mermaid holding a fish in the
Speaker 1: fish some balizes the entrapment of the Christian soul that
Speaker 1: was drawn to sin. And of course the mermaid is
Speaker 1: very sinful because she's not wearing a top and all
Speaker 1: that she represents lust and attractiveness and grandeur and riches,
Speaker 1: not wearing a shell. Bra Um. No, not nothing. These
Speaker 1: these early early face It wasn't until later until they
Speaker 1: became tool users, I guess right. Um. Later you see
Speaker 1: mermaids showing up in coat of arms as well. Uh Merman.
Speaker 1: For the most part, when they're depicted, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: generally seen as more aggressive. Uh. They're also like the mermaids,
Speaker 1: you know, fish lower half humans upper half, but they
Speaker 1: have a prevensity to be uglier uh up at the
Speaker 1: up at the top. Uh. And they're also big into
Speaker 1: like some summoning storms, pulling sailors out of ships to
Speaker 1: their death, that kind of thing. Uh merman. Well, he
Speaker 1: was a god, but I'm trying to remember how he
Speaker 1: was depicted. Well, there the true Well you see depictions
Speaker 1: of him where he is uh, where he has mermaid
Speaker 1: esque qualities. And they're also the tris of Greek myth
Speaker 1: which were which were offspring of gods, and they had
Speaker 1: they had lower portions. That were they were they were
Speaker 1: essentially mermien. Um. There were the blue There were the
Speaker 1: blue Men of Niche, which were a humanoid uh blueskin
Speaker 1: creatures that lived supposedly lived in deep water water caves
Speaker 1: near the Isle of Man. Uh. They were ruled by
Speaker 1: a chief. And the interesting thing about these guys that
Speaker 1: they came after your ship. Um. A clever captain could
Speaker 1: beat them with a cunning tongue he could use. He
Speaker 1: could throw out some riddles. Get the murf the mur
Speaker 1: folk these uh, these men of Minich thinking about the
Speaker 1: about this and then making out with them. Uh. They're
Speaker 1: the Nixies of Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland. And these are
Speaker 1: a fresh water mermaid creature, often gray or gray green
Speaker 1: skinned um and their bodies of course terminating these fish
Speaker 1: monstrosities as well. Uh. There are the marrows of Ireland.
Speaker 1: And these are in these you see traditional mermaids, but
Speaker 1: really ugly mermn They have green teeth, sharp uh, red noses,
Speaker 1: tiny eyes, green hair, webbed fingers. But they're also shape
Speaker 1: shifters who depend on a magical red cap. And they're
Speaker 1: they're basically the good natured and they don't like to
Speaker 1: they'll wander out and using their shape shifting abilities, they
Speaker 1: may marry humans with a magical red cap. There's the
Speaker 1: Welsh Morgan, which was a nursery boogie. Uh that was
Speaker 1: you know, existed solely to scare children into good behaviors.
Speaker 1: Cork Welsh nursery boogie who had abduct bad children. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were the halfway people. These are pretty interesting. These
Speaker 1: this was a myth of the Micmac people of eastern Canada.
Speaker 1: And these mer people sang like a lot of because
Speaker 1: with mermaid traditions you see a lot of the siren
Speaker 1: in the mermaids. You know, they're these creatures that sing
Speaker 1: beautiful songs and they lure sailors to their doom or
Speaker 1: they're like the mermaid and they're they're summoning horrible storms. There.
Speaker 1: Their gods are demi gods of the ocean. Well, the
Speaker 1: the Halfway people of the of Micmac folklore. Uh. They
Speaker 1: sang but that, but not to lure humans to their death.
Speaker 1: They did to warn local fishermen of brewing storms. It
Speaker 1: was only if you managed to antagonize them that they
Speaker 1: would actually summon storms against you. And then, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned in our episode on milk, Uh, there are a
Speaker 1: number of different myths where you see mermaids as herdsman
Speaker 1: or herds women for aquatic cattle beasts that may or
Speaker 1: may not be whales. Um, they're they're various sort of
Speaker 1: hag like creatures. There's a there's for instance, Margreger, a
Speaker 1: mermaid made in the folks editions of the people of
Speaker 1: Greenland that has an ugly flat face and evil eyes. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a creature called the Canito uh in Finland, and
Speaker 1: this was a mermaid creature with the breasts so large
Speaker 1: that she could throw them over her shoulder. And this
Speaker 1: is a really cool In Japan, Uh, their traditional mermaid
Speaker 1: was called Thenno and up and basically they were enormous
Speaker 1: fish with only the head of a beautiful woman. And
Speaker 1: they were benevolent, protective creatures that would warn humans of
Speaker 1: pending misfortunes, both at sea and on land. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then the one final one to mention here, because I
Speaker 1: imagine everyone's seen this one a lot. Uh when you
Speaker 1: go to Starbucks, there's a there's a there's a Meliusine
Speaker 1: or Meliusina, which is a medieval French mr Monster, daughter
Speaker 1: of a fairy and a mortal king. Uh. In the
Speaker 1: older depictions you'd see are addressed in medieval finery above
Speaker 1: the waist, but then she also has the wings of
Speaker 1: a dragon in this double serpentine fish tail below the waist.
Speaker 1: And you see this creature showing up in a lot
Speaker 1: of coat coat of arms, but also most notably at Starbucks.
Speaker 1: You know, I actually have a Mermaian at home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could you not? Well, I mean not obviously a
Speaker 1: real Mermaian, but it is because not your husband, because
Speaker 1: I saw him walking on two legs acincing like daggers
Speaker 1: were in his his legs or in his feet. Um. Yeah, Actually,
Speaker 1: I've got an old carney ride, or it was. It's
Speaker 1: a carved wood mermaids about five ft long, and it's
Speaker 1: got a little cut out in the center where kids
Speaker 1: can get in and ride. But it's obviously they are
Speaker 1: all linked together. But I have just one and it
Speaker 1: is terrifying, and it has huge glass eyes. Someone put
Speaker 1: glass eyes in it, and my daughter hates it, but
Speaker 1: it hangs exactly right. It was her cradle first. I'm kidding, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean we definitely have had a relationship
Speaker 1: with this idea of of mermaids and um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's pervaded our culture. And I think that that that
Speaker 1: that bit of wood sculpture I have is from like
Speaker 1: the nineties or something so like sort of Fiji mermaid days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I sent you a picture earlier. Just a real
Speaker 1: quick on modern mermaids as we see them in films. Um,
Speaker 1: in the rob zombie horror movie House of a Thousand Corpses,
Speaker 1: you get to see a pre Dwight shoot Rain Wilson
Speaker 1: um sewn to a fish as a as a a
Speaker 1: Fiji mermaid. It's pretty It made me kind of scream inside.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean these Fiji mermaids were something that
Speaker 1: we're we're often pro offered by Huckster's right, the turn
Speaker 1: of the center. Fish, you get a monkey, you sew
Speaker 1: them together. Uh. You know, corpses, you haven't kind of
Speaker 1: preserved they either you know, dried out or maybe I
Speaker 1: guess you could also most of them you see dried
Speaker 1: out and kind of mounted and stuff. But I guess
Speaker 1: you could also have put them in from how the
Speaker 1: height if you wanted to. Uh, and then you so, hey,
Speaker 1: here's the actual proof that mermaids existing, people would panicle
Speaker 1: for it, right, and you know, back in the day
Speaker 1: when you didn't necessarily have a lot of evidence, Um,
Speaker 1: that was like, oh good, yeah, but that is that
Speaker 1: could be a mermaid, all right. So that was an
Speaker 1: older sort of scientific, if you will, proof that mermaids
Speaker 1: did exist or could exist, because here is this body. Uh,
Speaker 1: you examine it, you realize it doesn't really hold up. Uh.
Speaker 1: Today we have a similar situation with the aquatic Gate.
Speaker 1: We should probably take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we will perform a necropsy on the idea
Speaker 1: of the aquatic days. All right, we're back, so you
Speaker 1: can imagine this here in our our podcast studio, and
Speaker 1: and stretched out before us on the table is the
Speaker 1: aquatic Gate. Uh. And we are going to cut this apart,
Speaker 1: look at it, feel it, uh, and see which parts
Speaker 1: feel truthful, which parts feel made up, which parts feel
Speaker 1: like a fish, which parts feel like a human. Let's
Speaker 1: time travel first. Okay, a million years ago, million years
Speaker 1: the earth is. You know, there's earthquakes, there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of crazy things going on. There's coastal flooding. Okay, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like our future. It's much like her
Speaker 1: path right. Uh. And so the idea, this, this aquatic
Speaker 1: ape idea, is that hominin hominins, hominal hominins split off
Speaker 1: from terrestrial apes millions of years ago and because of
Speaker 1: this this coastal flooding and they were treated into the water,
Speaker 1: evolving into aquatic creatures somewhat related to humans. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like it's kind of like in the morning,
Speaker 1: you wake up, you get out of bed, you realize
Speaker 1: you're too tired, you don't really like the waking world,
Speaker 1: so you creep back into bed for a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's it's similar. Mammals have have have risen out of
Speaker 1: the ocean. They've they've they've come onto the land, and
Speaker 1: then for whatever reason, they decide this is not working out.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna actually go back in the water now, which
Speaker 1: is something you see with with whales and dolphins. So
Speaker 1: taking that argument and uh and saying hey, maybe it
Speaker 1: happened with apes as well, taking the argument and then
Speaker 1: even saying like okay, well what about our lack of
Speaker 1: body hair. Yeah, we think that we can. You know,
Speaker 1: proponents of this idea and our idea, we grew body here,
Speaker 1: we evolved into hairy creatures when we initially came out
Speaker 1: of the the the oceans of the the primordial earth,
Speaker 1: and then when we returned, we lost that hair because
Speaker 1: it was unnecessary. Uh. And then you can point to
Speaker 1: examples like a hippo or a dolphin and say, look,
Speaker 1: there you go, an aquatic mammal doesn't have hair, and
Speaker 1: that is why we don't have hair, because we used
Speaker 1: to be merc creatures. Well, but people would say some
Speaker 1: people would say that doesn't really add up in your
Speaker 1: kind of cherry picking details. You're kind of choosing with
Speaker 1: your with your aquatic mammals too, because otters are pretty hairy,
Speaker 1: beavers are pretty hairy. I mean, these are all aquatic
Speaker 1: mammals that have kept a very you know, thick coat
Speaker 1: of hair. Right, And then you have the problem of
Speaker 1: evolution itself in terms of like, well, how could this
Speaker 1: occur in this time period? Because if it took whales
Speaker 1: from from going to terrestrial to aquatic beings ten million years,
Speaker 1: how could it be that, you know, in a million
Speaker 1: years that this could happen with with apes aquatic apes,
Speaker 1: So that that's obviously one of the big questions that
Speaker 1: comes up um as well is is the philogenny that
Speaker 1: this tree of life concept of organisms um that are
Speaker 1: are detailed by us and they are cold from evidence
Speaker 1: from morphological, biochemical, and gene sequenced data. Right, So this
Speaker 1: aquatic ape actually would exist outside of this organization, and
Speaker 1: this organization this philogenny is really the bedrock the central
Speaker 1: idea of evolution. So that's spotty too. Yeah, and another
Speaker 1: some of the other things that are thrown out there
Speaker 1: is is proof of the aquatic ape theory. Are are
Speaker 1: pretty suspect as well, Like the idea that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: look look at the human body. It's so it's a
Speaker 1: streamlined clearly it was made to swim. Well, not so
Speaker 1: much because you look at at truly aquatic mammals and
Speaker 1: they tend to have more of the torpedo shape. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's actually pretty hard for us to swim in general,
Speaker 1: right like such, and other people say, oh, we're such
Speaker 1: great swimmers, and we're not really great swimmers. I mean,
Speaker 1: Michael Phelps maybe, but but he is aside, everyone else
Speaker 1: is kind of kind of lacking. Okay, so we've talked
Speaker 1: about aquatic apes. Let's talk about the mermaid problem. The
Speaker 1: mermaid problem like as then we have a mermaid problem,
Speaker 1: and we need to put out some traps to catch
Speaker 1: some mermaids. Yeah, some combat, little huge traps, right that
Speaker 1: you just put behind your kitchen counter or your bathtube,
Speaker 1: because they're going to show some lobsters and some shells
Speaker 1: in there and a little bit of gold and they'll
Speaker 1: be attracted, you know. Now. The mermaid problem is this
Speaker 1: idea is that if they really existed, then what about
Speaker 1: their reproductive abilities? Um? And this is also it's kind
Speaker 1: of like what we got into with the center. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where is it going to go? How's it gonna work? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because human human and equine biologies rather rather different, and
Speaker 1: you if you try to merge the two, it's problematic.
Speaker 1: Even more so when you're trying to combine a human
Speaker 1: and a fish. Yeah. Uh. And um, here's the thing too.
Speaker 1: If you've got the torso of a human and the
Speaker 1: trunk of the fish tail, then you've got all sorts
Speaker 1: of logistical nightmare problems going on here, because apparently if
Speaker 1: you've got the breast, then there's going to be some
Speaker 1: sort of lactation going on, right, And then if you've
Speaker 1: got a navel, then that suggests that there's going to
Speaker 1: be some sort of umbilical cord tied to any sort
Speaker 1: of progeny. So then you look at the tail itself
Speaker 1: and you say, ah, where where would all the stuff go?
Speaker 1: Where would all the genitalia go? And you can look
Speaker 1: to something like a dolphin, for instance, and you can
Speaker 1: say that there could be a genitalia slit much like
Speaker 1: there's with a dolphin, But that still doesn't all sort
Speaker 1: of line up with how would um with the torso
Speaker 1: of human and this idea of a umbilical cord, how
Speaker 1: would all this work together? Yeah, it's it's really hard
Speaker 1: to to try and form a like a full theory
Speaker 1: of mermaid anatomy. Yeah, and yet because people have been
Speaker 1: so entranced by this idea of mermaids, especially lately, UM
Speaker 1: Noah has actually put up a special fact sheet about
Speaker 1: mermaids and they went to to the links to say,
Speaker 1: no mermaids have ever been found. Just about that, I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly throughout history to humans have I mean, part of
Speaker 1: it has been this sort of dream of what would
Speaker 1: it be like if there were people in the in
Speaker 1: the ocean, and what would it be like if I
Speaker 1: could need a beautiful woman out here in the sea.
Speaker 1: But then the other. The other part of that, we've
Speaker 1: we've often seen other creatures from a distance. We've seen
Speaker 1: seals or sea lions or manatees and uh, and we've
Speaker 1: fooled ourselves into thinking that we saw something that was
Speaker 1: half man and half fish. Right. And here's the other
Speaker 1: problem with this. If if mermaids are are going to
Speaker 1: be uh, this new species, this this idea that there
Speaker 1: would be a new species, and um, they would be
Speaker 1: connected to this bluep sound that we talked about. And
Speaker 1: we'll get more into that. Um. In order to produce
Speaker 1: that bluop song sound, they would have to be at
Speaker 1: least a hundred and ten feet long, longer than any
Speaker 1: other known organism, so that you would think that you'd
Speaker 1: be able to spot that pretty easily, right, Um, Which
Speaker 1: that gets into this whole blup idea in the first place.
Speaker 1: We talked about this before in our Underwater Sounds podcast,
Speaker 1: but just to bring it up again. The blue sound
Speaker 1: was actually recorded in originated from a point about fift
Speaker 1: miles west of the southern Chilean coast, and it was
Speaker 1: powerful enough to be picked up on sensors located up
Speaker 1: to three thousand miles away. Now there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of different sounds that um that Noah has picked up
Speaker 1: and has catalogued. But this is and remains an unidentified sound.
Speaker 1: And um, there is this idea that the sound profile
Speaker 1: sounds animalistic, but we're not quite sure. You know. Again,
Speaker 1: there's there's the morphology problem. If this emanated from an animal,
Speaker 1: it's got to be huge, a huge animal that would
Speaker 1: be easily spotted, right and would have to have would
Speaker 1: have to work fit into the ecosystem itself. Um, which
Speaker 1: is which is another thing you get into when you're
Speaker 1: we're talking about any cryptozoological creature via a a mermaid
Speaker 1: or bigfoot. Um, you know where where how is that?
Speaker 1: How would this fit into a given ecosystem? Where where
Speaker 1: is its uh it's protection particular niche in the system
Speaker 1: at large and uh and and often that that's where
Speaker 1: you see a lot of big holes. We'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: we would we would have observed it because there would
Speaker 1: be ex number of them. We would uh you know,
Speaker 1: we would we would see evidence of their feeding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you know the the animal planets, Uh, what
Speaker 1: if scenario of of mermaids definitely entertaining. But you can
Speaker 1: kind of see how when you start to look at
Speaker 1: some of those details in earnest um. I mean, and
Speaker 1: everybody knows that they're not for real anyway, but you
Speaker 1: can see how the the sort of organism probably would
Speaker 1: never exist. Yeah. But I love the idea of just
Speaker 1: getting people talking about it, you know, like just you know,
Speaker 1: get get people drawn into to view a show about
Speaker 1: mermaids and then uh, you know, then let's discuss the
Speaker 1: science of it. Let's uh, I mean, it's it's good
Speaker 1: food for thought, all right. You know, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: a total downer here too, Okay, Okay, I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: to the other thing that I think that it does
Speaker 1: and inadvertently is to throw a little light on this
Speaker 1: problem of sonar. As you say, um, you know, this
Speaker 1: has been a concern with with naval testing and just
Speaker 1: general noise pollution in the oceans. Yeah, and as you say,
Speaker 1: dolphins oils they use echo location um and just um.
Speaker 1: Just not too long ago, earth Watch reported that three
Speaker 1: thousand dolphins were found dead along the coast of Peru,
Speaker 1: and they were killed by deep water sonar sonar systems
Speaker 1: using seabed oil. UM exploration and researchers at the Organization
Speaker 1: for the Conservation of Aquatic Animals says that they found
Speaker 1: image in the dolphins middle earbones which was caused by
Speaker 1: ships son are blast and these acoustic booms actually disorient
Speaker 1: the animals and they produce hemorrhages and this is why
Speaker 1: they beached themselves. So actually, uh, the Animal Planet show
Speaker 1: does go into detail about this in the fictionalized account. Um,
Speaker 1: but I did think it was important to to bring
Speaker 1: this up, that that that is an actual, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the show, that that does have um, a
Speaker 1: foundation in reality. Downer Yeah, yeah, kind of a downer.
Speaker 1: And plus mermaids don't exist, so there's that too. So
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for for anyone who was listening hoping for
Speaker 1: for something different, but it would it would have been
Speaker 1: kind of jerky if we hadn't just come clean on
Speaker 1: that and said, well, they might have existed, because I
Speaker 1: don't want to build up false hope, especially for those
Speaker 1: lonely sailors out there who are listening to this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you don't want to be at a cocktail party
Speaker 1: and start like dropping mermaid fats, you know. Ah, the
Speaker 1: mermaids are are they continue to just be a really
Speaker 1: fascinating creature at least you know, in the in the
Speaker 1: mind and whether you're just thinking about it as as
Speaker 1: a folk tale idea or is a possible scientific reality,
Speaker 1: or as a it's just a fodder for for movies.
Speaker 1: A couple of other film mermaids that come to mind. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a movie called The She Creature years ago.
Speaker 1: I believe it had rufus Sewel in it and uh,
Speaker 1: and it was like an old timy horror story on
Speaker 1: a boat, and there was like a mysterious mermaid, but
Speaker 1: she had like a dual nature, so sometimes she looked like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, typical pretty lady on the top, half fish
Speaker 1: on the lower, and but then she would also turn
Speaker 1: into this aquatic monster that kind of looked like a
Speaker 1: Fiji mermaid. Uh. And then there was a there was
Speaker 1: another film that came out called Dagon, which loosely based
Speaker 1: on HP Lovecraft's uh the Shadow over in Smith and
Speaker 1: some of the other aquatic horror tales and uh this
Speaker 1: uh it was this movie was kind of a mixed bag,
Speaker 1: but it did depict a mermaid with that double tail
Speaker 1: the star about stage, which is kind of neat. So
Speaker 1: if you ever find yourself, uh considering picking up that film,
Speaker 1: it has some moments that work, and you do get
Speaker 1: to see a a double tailed mermaid in it. So
Speaker 1: there's that. I really wish that Splash would be remade
Speaker 1: with droll Hannah and uh, Quentin Tarantino would direct it
Speaker 1: a horror film or she's just okay, that's a horror film, now, okay,
Speaker 1: horror film. Yes, there's a lot of I mean, it
Speaker 1: clicks because clearly you look at the folk tales as
Speaker 1: there are many of these stories where it's like the
Speaker 1: Mermaid is there, the mer people are dragging humans down
Speaker 1: and they're you know, to some watery hell of drowned sailors.
Speaker 1: There's there's all sorts of horrible stuff with the Mermaid.
Speaker 1: It seems like you would see more horror tales involving
Speaker 1: them rather than just straight up fantasy. But well maybe
Speaker 1: we will. But then again, you said, you said that
Speaker 1: in the Christian's Christian Anderson there was more more horror
Speaker 1: than we have. There's always horror and gore. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so there you go. Mermaids. You can check out the
Speaker 1: show on Animal Planet and you can also write into
Speaker 1: us and like, let us know what you think about Mermaids.
Speaker 1: Do you have particular thoughts about mermaids and folk tales,
Speaker 1: mermaids and legend and myth, Mermaids at the cinema, I
Speaker 1: don't know, mermaids in video games? Where wherever mermaids gathered?
Speaker 1: Mermaids in space, mermaids in space. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: that would work, but I'm all for it. Um. And
Speaker 1: there you know there's actually um. I forgot to mention
Speaker 1: the merror creature that is a half pope. I should
Speaker 1: have like the pontiff. Yeah, is this in the pontiff?
Speaker 1: I'll have to throw him on the block press because
Speaker 1: he's pretty cool. But yeah, they're They're just countless cool
Speaker 1: mermaids from history. Um, So let us know what you
Speaker 1: think about that. Let us know what you think about
Speaker 1: this aquatic eight uh theory slash hypothesis. If you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts on that, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook, where we are stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your Mind, and you can also find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter, where we go under the handle below the mind,
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line at blew
Speaker 1: the Mind at house to coorts dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit Howstuff Works
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