![]() Just what they saw has never been decided, and the sighting of the HMS Daedalus remains one of the most credible. was, without any doubt, that of a snake and it was never, during the twenty minutes that it continued in sight of our glasses, once below the surface of the water." It was a dark brown fading to yellow at the throat, and he added that while there were no fins, it did have a ridge of what looked like hair down its back.Īs members of the Royal Navy, M'Quhae and his crew had nothing to gain and everything to lose - and, as it turns out, they were heartily ridiculed as scientists tried explaining what they'd seen by suggesting it was something like an elephant seal - animals that lifelong Navy men would have been able to recognize. He testified (via Skeptical Inquirer) that "the head. maybe Grew was right all along?Ĭaptain Peter M'Quhae gave an official report to the Royal Navy, and wrote that the ship had been approached by a creature moving fast, but close enough that he and his officers got a good look at the head and shoulders of the 60-foot-long serpent. Still, New Scientist points out that University of London researchers estimate there's still a number of pinniped species we just haven't found yet, so. ![]() That hasn't stopped experts - like the 19th century zoologist Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans - from arguing that the specimen that Grew cataloged was what countless people had actually seen when they thought, "Sea serpent!" Even then, he was pretty thoroughly scoffed at for suggesting the idea and the long-necked seal has been relegated to the mythical, cryptozoological section of natural sciences. It would explain some sea monster sightings, but there's a giant catch: The skin Grew was talking about has disappeared, and no other long-necked seals have ever been seen. When he assembled a catalogue of specimens at the Royal Society of London in the late 1600s, he included the description of a skin that had belonged to a seal that reportedly had a neck that was just as long as the rest of the body. If we don’t take actions like slowing boaters and reducing fertilizer runoff, we may lose these creatures, and a source of mermaid myth will vanish from the ocean.Grew, notes The Public Domain Review, was a legitimate scientist who revolutionized everything we know about plant anatomy. The IUCN lists the dugong as vulnerable, as it is extinct or declining in at least one-third of its range. There is also trouble for dugongs, close relatives of the manatee that share many of the same threats. One subspecies, the Antillean or Caribbean manatee ( Trichehus manatus manatus), currently has a population of just 2,500 mature individuals and is expected to decline by more than 20 percent over the next two generations unless something can be done to reduce these threats. Because of such harrowing statistics, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed all three species of manatees as vulnerable to extinction, and a few manatee subspecies as endangered. Of these, 276 were killed by algae blooms, 115 from an unknown disease, and 72 from boat collisions. Florida manatee deaths hit a record high in 2013, with 829 killed-about 17 percent of the known population, including 126 calves. With all of these factors combined, manatees are suffering. Barrie's Peter Pan, some versions of mermaids can be kind, such as Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, made famous by Disney’s 1989 popular film iteration of the same story. Although these sirens had vicious personalities, as did the mermaids in J.M. ![]() Though the ancient Greek sirens, who lured sailors to their deaths in Homer's Odyssey, were originally described as having bird bodies, they are often portrayed as fish-tailed mermaids-so frequently that variations on the word “siren” means mermaid in many languages. The first recorded half-fish, half-human creature is Oannes, a Babylonian god from the 4th century BCE who would leave the sea every day and return at night. Mermaid mythology is quite varied, with mermaids taking on many different appearances, origins, and personalities. ![]() One creature that shows up in such stories throughout history is the mermaid. ![]() They helped to bring the mysterious ocean into the more familiar realm of the ‘known' by introducing human traits and an element of storytelling. In centuries past, the ocean was thought to be full of krakens, sea serpents, sea monsters and other fantastic creatures. ![]()
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