NOAA on Mermaids

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a statement on mermaids. This is your tax dollars at work. Let’s see how they did.

A Mermaid by Waterhouse

public domain

They state that “The ancient Greek epic poet Homer wrote of them in The Odyssey.” No, Odysseus encountered sirens, not mermaids. They were part bird.

Sirens by Hans Thoma  

Then they state, “The belief in mermaids may have arisen at the very dawn of our species. Magical female figures first appear in cave paintings in the late Paleolithic (Stone Age) period.” But those were similar to this rotund, faceless carved image.

 This file comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust,

a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom.

They give their final statement: “No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.” So there. I can’t show their picture of a mermaid, since I’m not sure of its copyright status, but you can see it at their website. It doesn’t compare well with any of the above.