A friend of mine, at dinner, was telling me all about mermaids, from some tv show. Discovery Channel? History Channel? Science Channel? Anyway…
Photographic evidence, film taken of animals on beaches, film taken by deep-water submersibles, photos of their hands, photos of their faces. Some kind of humanoid/delphinoid pelagic species. Webbed fingers. Ridge on top of head.
A university in South Africa had samples, but U.S. forces raided them and stole them…
That was the point where I stopped being interested. U.S. forces raiding a South African university to steal mermaid parts? I don’t believe it…
It apparently ties in with the undersea “Bloop.” (?)
Oh, yeah, and the film shows one of them using a spear. They’re intelligent, tool-using, language-using creatures…
What’s the Straight Dope? Is this the load of elbow shavings it sounds like?
It was easy to miss the declaimer. Madame Pepperwinkle and I watched it, knew to look for the disclaimer, but still missed it. The biggest giveaway was how good-looking ALL the scientists were. Oh, and it was on Animal Planet, not Discovery.
Oops! Now I’m embarrassed, having just written a letter to Discovery. :smack:
American idom, “Wait for the other shoe to drop.” It means to be in a state of anticipation, waiting for the completion of a sequence that has begun. It comes from hearing the sound of the upstairs neighbor taking off his shoes. You hear one loud “Thunk” and sit there, waiting…waiting…until, “Thunk,” the other shoe drops. Silly Yank figure of speech.
And… (you probably already knew that…) Ah! The Little Mermaid Statue! Yes, definitely!
It could be a valid, anthropological documentary about the myths and legends of mermaids, and how the myths have evolved in part by historical relics and hoaxes.
Something similar to The Natural History of the Unicorn, a nonfiction book that tells about various myths and legends of unicorns, and brings in real-life creatures like narwhals to explore how the myths came about.
That kind of sociological, historical, and literary/artistic survey could have been excellent. There’s certainly no shortage of art to use, and numerous movies to show clips from. I’d enjoy such a show.
(They might have problems with depictions of bare-breasted mermaids… Sigh…)
Well, yeah… But did Odysseus meet male Sirens? Were the gay members of Columbus’ crew tempted by male merpeople? Did Hans Christian Andersen write about a little merboy? Did Disneyland have mermen in the lagoon?
Mermaids, in contrast to many extant cryptids, are generalized from the female. (No one has, so far, claimed to see a Bigfoot or Chupacabra with breasts!)