Mermaids are creatures that seem to live in books, but there are many sightings of mermaids in the world, which are bizarre and mysterious.
In the legends of many ancient civilizations around the world, mermaids are almost all mermaids, for example, in Nordic legends, mermaids are the nightmare of all people who go to sea, and they confuse sailors with seductive songs, causing ships to sink on the reef.
In Chinese folklore, there is no shortage of legends about mermaids, such as the common bridge section in ancient Zhiwei novels, where a man steals a mermaid's hat or items such as combs and mirrors, and when these stolen things are properly hidden, the mermaid will live with him. But when the mermaid finds what she lost, it will return to the sea again.
In different civilizations in the world, the image of the mermaid is similar, basically the upper body is the image of a woman, and the lower body is the image of a fish. In some ancient Western paintings, there are sometimes images of mermaids with two tail fins, which is somewhat incredible.
There are many legends about mermaids in human civilization, and civilizations of different continents rarely had the opportunity to communicate in ancient times, but the legends of mermaids have appeared invariably. Is this just a coincidence? At present, human beings cannot explain the mystery of this, and why the artistic image of mermaid appears between different civilizations.
If mermaids do not exist, why do so many civilizations have mermaid images? But if the mermaid is real, humans have not yet captured a live specimen of the mermaid. From a scientific point of view, if you want to prove that a species has really existed, even if no living specimens have been captured, at least fossils or remains of such creatures must be found. However, whether it is the fossil or remains of the mermaid, humans have never found it, and the Mummy of the Fijian mermaid that was once a raging mess was eventually confirmed by scientists to be fake.
Mermaid mummies
Although humans have never caught mermaids, there have been numerous sightings of mermaids. In the past hundred years, there have been mermaid sightings almost every few years, most of which have been proven to be false, and a few of which have not been able to distinguish between true and false. For example, in June 2013, many people in yam town in Israel's Haifa district claimed to have seen mermaids in the sea, and the local government issued a reward order calling on everyone to come and find mermaids. In fact, this is just a tourist promotion, the purpose is to attract tourists to visit.
Most mermaid sightings are designed to attract attention, and only a handful of sightings are worthy of in-depth study by scientists. For example, in the summer of 1955, a small fishing village in Guangdong province once caught a marine creature said to be a mermaid, weighing a staggering 400 kilograms. At that time, some people took pictures, but because of the long time, the photos were lost, and it was impossible to verify what kind of marine life was caught. But local elders recall that when they were young, the village did catch mermaid-like marine life.
There are many legends in the mainland, for example, when Qin Shi Huang built a mausoleum for himself, he not only cast the prototype of the rivers and seas in the mausoleum with mercury, but even the changming lamp in the mausoleum used a paste made of mermaids, which is said to burn for ten thousand years without extinction.
In ancient Chinese literature, there are many records of mermaids, such as the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" and the "Book of Search for Gods", there are records of mermaids.
But in 1975, scientists launched a "mermaid round-up" operation to catch mermaids in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. With the use of dozens of fishing boats and advanced instruments, the expedition did catch some exotic creatures from the sea. So, did this fishing operation 46 years ago catch a mermaid? What were the strange creatures that the expedition had caught from the sea?
Dugong (manatee)
At that time, the scientists of the expedition did catch a lot of strange creatures from the sea, but after identification by marine biologists, it was found that these were not mermaids, but a marine mammal named dugong. Because this creature needs to surface regularly to breathe, coupled with the habit of foraging with its cubs in its arms, it will be mistaken for a mermaid.
Mermaids are dugongs, which is the official scientific explanation, but I believe that mermaids are real, after all, the ocean is so big, so mysterious, it is possible that somewhere in the sea there is such a beautiful and mysterious population.