{"id":292,"date":"2012-07-04T07:14:42","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T07:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technogypsie.com\/faerie\/?p=292"},"modified":"2012-07-04T07:14:42","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T07:14:42","slug":"there-are-no-mermaids-us-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/there-are-no-mermaids-us-government\/","title":{"rendered":"There are no mermaids: US government"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know there has to be something incredible about to be revealed when after thousands of years of myth and legend, all of the sudden the Government has to address fairy tales and telling people that such things “PROBABLY” do not exist … ~ Leaf McGowan<\/em>
\n[cross post via WordPress PressThis ]<\/strong><\/em>
\nhttp:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/no-mermaids-us-government-212628320.html<\/a><\/p>\n

\"AFP\"
\n<\/a>AFP\u00a0\u0096\u00a03 hrs ago<\/abbr><\/cite><\/div>\n
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The United States government\u00a0has assured its citizens that, much like zombies,\u00a0mermaids\u00a0probably do not exist, saying in an official post: “No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.”<\/p>\n

“Mermaids — those half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea — are legendary\u00a0sea creatures,” read the online statement from the\u00a0National Ocean Service\u00a0(NOS).<\/p>\n

The agency, charged with responding to natural hazards, received letters inquiring about the existence of the sea maidens after\u00a0the Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet network broadcast “Mermaids: The Body Found” in May.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"File
\n<\/a>File photo of Hannah the Mermaid\u00a0\u0085\u00a0<\/em>The show “paints a wildly convincing picture of the existence of mermaids, what they may look like, and why they’ve stayed hidden… until now,” a Discovery Channel press release says.<\/p>\n

Conversely, the US\u00a0government\u00a0declaration offered no conclusive proof to deny the existence of mermaids.<\/p>\n

The statement comes after another\u00a0government agency, this time the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), declared there was no conclusive evidence for the existence of zombies.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0CDC\u00a0had published instructional materials on how to survive a “zombie apocalypse,” in what the agency now calls “a tongue in cheek campaign to engage new audiences with messages of preparedness messages.”<\/p>\n

The campaign was followed by a series of cannibalistic attacks in North America.
\n\"People
\n<\/a>People dressed as zombies march\u00a0\u0085<\/em>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\nIn one such attack on May 26, a 31-year-old Miami man stripped naked and chewed off most of a homeless man’s face.
\nThe Twittersphere was suddenly alive with people talking about the real and present danger of a zombie apocalypse.
\nThe CDC was quick to respond to allegations of corpses rising from the dead to eat the living.
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\n“CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead,” a government spokesperson wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.
\nWhile zombies would be a big problem, popular folklore holds that mermaids are relatively benign creatures.<\/p>\n

But the NOS statement associated the finned friends with more threatening mythological beasts.<\/p>\n

“Half-human creatures, called chimeras, also abound in mythology — in addition to mermaids, there were wise centaurs, wild satyrs, and frightful minotaurs, to name but a few,” it said.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/mermaids-dont-exist-noaa-website-notes-225250486.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mermaids Don’t Exist, NOAA Website Notes<\/h1>\n

\"LiveScience.com\"<\/a>By\u00a0Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor\u00a0|\u00a0LiveScience.com\u00a0\u0096\u00a08 hrs ago<\/abbr><\/cite>\n<\/div>\n

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The\u00a0National Ocean Service’s June 27 posting that\u00a0mermaids\u00a0don’t exist may seem an odd fit for a government agency that focuses on real ocean phenomena. But according to a spokesperson the mermaid posting is just one way to educate people, and perhaps bust some mermaid myths.<\/p>\n

The timing of the post seems to coincide with the Animal Planet show “Mermaids: The Body Found,” which came out at the end of May and explored whether there is “a kernel of truth that lives beneath the legend of\u00a0the mythic mermaid<\/a>,” according to the show’s description.<\/p>\n

Not so, says the National Ocean Service (part of the\u00a0National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,NOAA). “No evidence of\u00a0aquatic humanoids<\/a>\u00a0has ever been found,” part of the post reads. Nevertheless, a NOAA spokesperson would not confirm that the post was in direct response to the show, which was presented in documentary format.<\/p>\n

The reference to “aquatic humanoids” alludes to a controversial theory called the aquatic ape theory, which suggests humans had an aquatic stage in our evolutionary past. Called “pseudoscience” by anthropologist\u00a0John Hawks on his blog<\/a>, this theory is not supported by most scientists.<\/p>\n

The Animal Planet summary says its show is “a story about evolutionary possibility grounded in a radical scientific theory \u0096 the Aquatic Ape Theory, which claims that humans had an aquatic stage in our evolutionary past.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0mermaids\u00a0post is part of the Ocean Facts section of the National Ocean Service website to answer inquiries they receive. Since October 2008, they have posted 195 ocean facts items.<\/p>\n

“The timing was around that time. I think the TV show came out around Memorial Day and we got a few of the questions [about mermaids],” Keeley Belva,\u00a0spokesperson\u00a0for NOAA’s National Ocean Service, told\u00a0LiveScience. “Arguably, yes, the timing is tied to the documentary.”<\/p>\n

She added, “As we had gotten a couple questions about mermaids, we thought this would be a fun way to talk about it and to have information up about mermaids in different cultures and to draw people into our website and learn more about what NOAA and the National Ocean Service does.” [Top 10 Mythical Creatures<\/a>]<\/p>\n

In popular myth, mermaids are half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea. As the ocean facts post points out, they “are legendary sea creatures chronicled in maritime cultures since time immemorial.” For instance, Homer wrote of them in the ancient Greek epic “The Odyssey,” and in the Far East, mermaids were considered the wives of powerful\u00a0sea dragons<\/a>, serving as trusted messengers between the spouses and emperors of the land.
\nIn fact, the scientific grouping Sirenia, which includes\u00a0manatees<\/a>\u00a0and their close relative the dugong comes from mermaid legend. Sailors long ago mistook these large gentle marine mammals for mermaids, or sirens who sang songs to lure ships into rocky shores. Legend has it that Christopher Columbus recorded a sighting of a manatee, saying he was surprised at the not-so-beautiful “mermaid,” according to the Dolphin Research Center in Florida.
\nThe aboriginal people of Australia had their own name for mermaids, yawkyawks, which could refer to the sirens’ allegedly mesmerizing songs. In fact, as far back as 30,000 years ago when humans were becoming the dominant species of the land, and possibly taking to the seas, they seem to have imagined magical female figures. These figures first appear in cave paintings at the time.<\/p>\n

“Half-human creatures, called chimeras, also abound in mythology \u0097 in addition to mermaids, there were wise centaurs, wild satyrs, and frightful minotaurs, to name but a few,” according to the NOAA Web posting.<\/p>\n

Even today, “mermaid” sightings still occur. For instance, in 2009 in the Israeli town of Kiryat Yam, locals and tourists flocked to the coast in hopes of\u00a0glimpsing an alleged mermaid<\/a>\u00a0that resembled a cross between a fish and a young girl; apparently she would only appear at sunset.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know there has to be something incredible about to be revealed when after thousands of years of myth and legend, all of the sudden the Government has to address fairy tales and telling people that such things “PROBABLY” do not exist … ~ Leaf McGowan [cross post via WordPress PressThis ] http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/no-mermaids-us-government-212628320.html AFP\u00a0\u0096\u00a03 hrs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,24,59],"tags":[181,408,410,769,820,1158,1244],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-myth","category-mermaids","category-zombies","tag-belief","tag-existence","tag-fae","tag-mermaids-2","tag-mythical-creatures","tag-u-s-government","tag-zombies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/lore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}