Early Accounts of Whales and Manatees May Have Inspired Mermaid Folklore

Open your favorite fairy tale book by When You Kid, and you are sure to find a story on the sirens, mythical half-poles who live in the depths of the ocean. Some stories describe sirens as friendly, while others are not so much.

However, the idea of sirens comes more than children’s stories. Many cultures around the world have a form of a mermaid place that goes up hundreds, even thousands, years. Does this mean that they really existed at a given time? Or did our ancestors confused merfolk with something else?

Mermaid folklore from around the world

It is not an exaggeration to say that siren folklore is around the world. Many different cultures have a kind of mermaid legend.

Celtic mythologies often discuss legends such as CEASG – a creature that has a woman’s upper body and the tail of a salmon – and Selkie, a creature similar to a seal that can get rid of their skin and end. Other European countries have legends such as melusine, a figure with the chest and the head of a woman and the tail of a snake – sometimes two tails, such as the Starbucks logo.

In Japan, there is a legend of the ningyo, a figure with the head of a human and the body of a fish which could allegedly scream with pearl tears. In Hindu culture, Matsya is the avatar of the fish of the Vishnu god, protector of the universe. Merfolk appears even in ancient Greek mythology, including Odyssey.

However, many of these myths and legends could be repressed in a classic case of poor identification.

What inspired sirens?

Sirens can resemble sailors and tale fishermen composed at sea, but it is possible that they have seen something that they could not explain and attribute it to the sirens and other creatures of folklore. Take the Dugong and their nearby cousin, the Lamantin. Some experts suggest that when the sailors met these animals for the first time, they thought they saw sirens.

There is even a story by Christopher Columbus saying that members of his crew had spotted “sirens”, although they were ugly and seemed more male than the legends sirens. It is difficult to say how valid your account is; Man has confused North America for India.

However, a study in 2023 in the journal Marine mammals science suggests that the unique feeding strategy of a whale can be responsible for the mermaid and other legendary witnesses to the sea monsters.

A tale whale

Over the past two decades, researchers have observed a phenomenon which they call “the food of the trap” among the humpback whales in the northeast Pacific. Researchers have also observed a similar food method (although it can be distinct, according to the Marine mammals science Study) in a Bryde whale in the Gulf of Thailand called the food of the cardboard.

The power strategy involves the whale that works on water on the surface with its wide open jaws. The whale is seated, patiently waiting for the prey to enter its mouth before quickly closing its jaw and trapping its prey. According to the study, this behavior may have inspired the legends of the sirens and the Krakens while the first explorers and the fishermen sailed in the seas.

The recordings of these types of feedings were relatively rare until recently; The authors of the study think that with the rise of whale surveillance, biologists now testify more often. However, for this study, the authors analyzed a 2000 -year -old Nordic text which describes this food model and notes that the Nordic authors have attributed this behavior to a creature called “hafgufa”.

“He struck me that the Nordic description of HAFGUFA was very similar to the behavior shown in videos of traps that feed the whales, but I thought it was just an interesting coincidence at the start,” said John McCarthy, a maritime archaeologist at the College of Human Sciences, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University, in a press release.

“Once I started examining it in detail and discussing it with colleagues specializing in medieval literature, we have realized that the oldest versions of these myths do not describe sea monsters at all, but are explicit to describe a type of whale,” concluded McCarthy in the press release.

This article is a republished version of Ther Article published previously.

Learn more: The dugong is a cousin of manure that no longer exists in China

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