Is it possible to create a mermaid

In the hands of a loyal man, her magical comb and mirror impart instant wealth, but faced with betrayal, she rains down fury and destruction. Mermaids are alluring and elusive, feminine and animal, protective and devastating. And imagined mermaids are almost always beautiful. It's the most obvious key to their allure. But in real life, the mermaid picture isn't always so pretty. One spotted near Indonesia in had the mouth of a carp.

Mermaids aren't the only fish-human hybrids. Mermen, too, have the upper bodies of humans and the lower bodies of fish, and they appear often in early religious symbolism and myth.

The Greek god Triton, son of sea-ruler Poseidon, was a merman [source: Theoi ]. In merfolk sightings and cultural symbolism, though, the female of the species is far more visible. It had a mostly human-looking body, but with webbed hands and feet, spines running down its head and neck, and a mouth that looked like a carp's [source: Cryptomundo ].

The villagers knew of these creatures, as they sometimes got trapped in fishing nets [source: Cameron ]. Coastal dwellers and sailors are the most common reporters of mermaid sightings. Hudson saw one with long, black hair, fair skin, large breasts and a porpoise tail in , near Russia [sources: Cavendish , The New York Times ].

John Smith, after Pocahontas saved him, was in the West Indies in when he almost fell in love with a mermaid with long, green hair; he thought she was a woman swimming until he glimpsed below the waist. Columbus spotted three mermaids in but said they were not as pretty as he expected them to be [source: Stieber ]. A videotaped "encounter" off the coast of Greenland became big news in when Discovery's Animal Planet promoted it, albeit in a fake documentary called "Mermaids: The New Evidence" that saw massive ratings and followed on the heels of its also fake show "Mermaids: The Body Found.

Here's how the program presented it: In , marine biologist Torsten Schmidt not an actual scientist was with his team in the Greenland Sea, performing seismic mapping 3, feet 1 kilometer below the surface, when they encountered sounds they'd never heard before. Perplexed, they recorded them and asked their employer, the Iceland GeoSurvey, if they could investigate further.

The Iceland GeoSurvey rejected the request. So Schmidt took a team down on his own, and they "found" something. In March , they captured video of an encounter with a human-like creature with webbed hands. The rest is ratings history. Not surprisingly, seafarers' mermaid encounters are often rejected — dismissed as hallucination, the result of too many days at sea or an overactive imagination [source: MarineBio Conservation Society ].

Scholars have claimed that Christopher Columbus mistook manatees for mermaids which might explain his disappointment about their looks. One officer who returned from the Kai Islands after the war asked Japanese biologists to investigate the monsters he saw, but they declined [source: Cameron ]. And understandably so. The mermaid thing is a tough sell.

That doesn't mean mainstream scientists don't talk about it, though. Mermaids can become entangled in the superstition of sailors, the fear of watery death. An Old Norse text from the 13th century, "Speculum Regale" "The King's Mirror" , describes a mermaid living off the coast of Greenland who acted as an omen.

With soft hair, webbed hands and a frightening face, she appeared before a big storm, holding fish. If she tossed them toward the ship, it meant sailors would die in the storm. If she tossed them away from the ship, all onboard would survive [source: Stieber ].

An article about mermaids appeared in the scientific journal Limnology and Oceanography in In it, respected biological oceanographer Karl Banse offered a tongue-in-cheek analysis of mermaid biology and lifestyle. Banse took known facts about aquatic life and extrapolated to theorize about mermaid characteristics [source: McClain ]. In "Mermaids: Their Biology, Culture, and Demise," Banse suggests that there were once three species of mermaid, distinguished by their geographical locations.

All would have been warm-water creatures, as they lacked the heavy blubber necessary to live in colder seas. The ones Columbus saw were the species Siren indica , who lived in the Atlantic Ocean. Mermaids, says Banse, fed on the flesh of humans. It's worth noting, though, that a sighting off the coast of British Columbia had a mermaid eating salmon [source: Cameron ].

In terms of physical build, Banse disagrees with the traditional depiction of the mermaid's tail as covered in smooth scales. Former NOAA employees share their thoughts on whale beachings and government secrecy. But the main focus of the film is scientific evidence and theories that support the idea of "aquatic humanoids," as the NOAA calls them. Filmmakers animate how early humans might have moved from land to sea and chronicle the appearance of mermaids in art throughout history and among various cultures.

Other users posted comments questioning government secrecy, debating the scientific veracity of physical similarities between humans and aquatic mammals or -- in most cases -- making fun of viewers who believed the fictitious aspects of the "mockumentary. And if you believe you're a mermaid, you're a mermaid. He said young visitors often ask whether or not the mermaids are real. Mermaid parade: A hidden exotic gem. The Greeks imagined lots of creatures that were part human and part animal, like harpies bird and human and centaurs horse and human.

Sometimes their mermaids were good, like the Greek goddess Atargatis, who protected humans, but others were dangerous, like the Sirens, who sang beautiful songs that made sailors crash their ships into rocks and sink.

Mermaid bodies have been imagined differently in different places. Stories about mermaids also varied depending on where and when they were told. Only some are about mermaids falling in love and wanting to be human, like Ariel and Ponyo.

In a lot of places, mermaids were used as symbols of power and wealth. For example, the city of Warsaw in Poland has a legend of a mermaid who is considered to be the protector of the city. Many castles in Europe also have mermaid symbols to demonstrate royal power and wealth — even in countries with no oceans, like Austria.

You may wonder how mermaids came to be. Why did so many people around the world imagine them throughout history? Superstitious sailors, including Christopher Columbus and others, reported seeing mermaids on their travels, but scientists and historians think they probably saw real animals, like manatees or seals.