• Question: Do you think it will ever be possible for mermaids to exist?

    Asked by veryvexatious to Debbie on 12 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Debbie Crockard

      Debbie Crockard answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Unfortunately I don’t think they could exist in the way that they are portrayed on film (which is a sad thought).

      In the olden days sailors used to mistake manatees for mermaids ( which doesn’t say much about their taste in women), manatees are beautiful but not in that way!

      But that being said evolution is always working in strange and wonderful ways, for example Sea Gypsy’s in Asia (people who live almost entirely in and around the sea) have been shown to have significantly better vision underwater than a regular European child – this adaptation allows them to find and catch things like clams underwater amazingly well.

      This type of adaptation might be due to genetics – it is a great advantage to the Gypsy’s or it may be environmental – what ever it is it is extremely important for their survival.

      To me this is only one example of how humans are still adapting to their environment – if we had to adapt to living almost exclusively in the water I can imagine having webbed toes might be a big advantage – at the moment about 1 in 3000 people have some sort of webbed toes but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with adapting to life in the water.

      But it is fun to imagine and evolution has resulted in stranger things – just look a the platypus!

      http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2004/05/0514_040514_seagypsies_2.html
      http://www.theoceanadventure.com/FMIE/FM10.html

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