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Did mermen ever really exist?

Vixen said:
I didn't say they were 'numerous' I considered that maybe they were extinct, having once existed, given the numerous sightings from all different cultures and eras.
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Edited by kmortis: 
Removed to comply with Rule 12


Mermaids don't exist. They never existed. This is not an argument we should be have with an ostensibly grown person in 2018.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Edited by kmortis: 
Removed to comply with Rule 12


Mermaids don't exist. They never existed. This is not an argument we should be have with an ostensibly grown person in 2018.
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Alright then, what about merbutlers? Did they exist? Can't disprove them! I WIN!!!
 
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What happened to your wife Captain Belvedere?

Well, she said she was going down to the wharf for a stroll, when I went to look for her, I saw a Merman swimming off with her. Pesky devils.

Oh not again! One of those Mermen took my daughters virginity as well. Thank goodness the priest understood.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
You can't have it both ways.

You can't simultaneously claim that there are stories of mermen from numerous different cultures around the world- meaning lots of people saw them- and then say there are almost certainly undiscovered species in the oceans- meaning no-one has seen them, at least not in modern times.

If they were as numerous and widespread as the myths you are relying on claim, then we would have sightings from the C20th at least.

I can't believe I've been sucked into this....
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Vixen said:
I didn't say they were 'numerous' I considered that maybe they were extinct, having once existed, given the numerous sightings from all different cultures and eras.
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Neither did I. I said the cultures reporting sightings were numerous.
Now we've cleared that up, would you care to answer my actual point, rather than this clumsy attempt at a dodge?
 
Planigale said:
May I recommend a date with Ramona Random. She may be able to brief you assuming you are cleared for Blue Hades, otherwise the date may be ...
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That reminds me, I need to read up on what happened after CASE NIGHTMARE RED
 
Apathia said:
Hey, the sky's the limit, and that's not very limiting. Given a multiverse, or simply other planets to play with, You can make a very plausible world in which there are Mermen.

You can make your creatures biologically plausible, or you can just assume them via Magical Realism.

Some of us here write Fantasy and Science Fictions stories with ease and not a care about if the creatures we write about ever existed. Stories are good that way. I'm happy to write about creatures from Irish and Japanese folklore and religions. I don't feel I have to write about only scientifically verified species. I don't mind supernatural elements in my stories. I do have a fudge about "ultranaturalism," but its not something serious.

Being skeptical about Mermen, doesn't keep you from loading up your fictional net with them. The writers for the TV series Siren don't care whether or not there could be or could have been Mermaids.

Who's to say there's not a Megadolon somewhere out in the Pacific trenches. It makes no difference to anyone profiting from "The Meg."
You let me have my Ashura and I'll let you have your Merman. :wackyyes:
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http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...alf-we-took-paleobiologist-new-movie-find-out

The bits that the film got right were interesting@

Q: What did The Meg get right?

A: They got the jaws and teeth right. A megalodon mouth is so big that you could swim into it without touching any of the teeth. It literally could swallow a small car without having to chomp down on it. And the teeth would be about 7 inches or 17 centimeters tall, and it would have several rows in its mouth at once, so as it lost or broke teeth, it could easily replace them.
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Q: What about the behavior? They had it ramming into ships and underwater subs, is that accurate?

A: That’s a plausible behavior. They might have bumped into prey to stun them or take a little test nibble. There’s a specimen of a small baleen whale that was probably hit by a meg, with unbelievable damage to the skull. There’s also a fossilized whale vertebra from the Chesapeake Bay with this weird compression fracture, which basically could only have happened if something took the whale and almost snapped its backbone.

Q: In the movie, "the meg" could bite a ship in half, would that be possible?

A: Yes. Paleontologists have done some sort of biomechanical modeling based on teeth we’ve found, and they calculated the bite force would be about 40,000 pounds per square inch, which is by far the highest bite force ever calculated for any animal, living or extinct. Even the [Tyrannosaurus rex] bite would be puny by comparison.

Q: If humans and megs were around at the same time, would it try to eat us, like in the movie?

A: It probably wouldn’t go after one or two humans swimming. It would see them as too small to be a good meal. But a whole beach full of swimmers, it might just swim through and scoop up several humans without even chewing, as it does in the movie.
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And then he lets slip that later in the time of Megalon, there were ocean predators with bigger teeth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livyatan
 
Back when the Weekly World News existed as a physical publication, they had a letter column in which a "psychic" answered paranormal-related questions that had allegedly been submitted by readers. I remember one column in which someone said that they used to see mermaids all the time when they were a child, but never saw them anymore, and they were wondering if they had become extinct. The columnist responded that increasing pollution had driven the mermaids to the deepest parts of the ocean, which was why they weren't seen now.
 
Vixen said:
The poster who claims the ocean and all its fossils has been completely charted is talking rubbish. Biologists openly admit there are numerous numbers of fish species yet to be found as the oceans are vast and deep, especially around the Indian Ocean in the southern regions.
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"Mermen" aren't a fish species though.
 
carlitos said:
Originally Posted by Vixen
The poster who claims the ocean and all its fossils has been completely charted is talking rubbish. Biologists openly admit there are numerous numbers of fish species yet to be found as the oceans are vast and deep, especially around the Indian Ocean in the southern regions.
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"Mermen" aren't a fish species though.
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It might also be worth pointing out, too, that, AFACT, nobody in this thread has made the claim that "the ocean and all its fossils has been completely charted"- this, with the implication that charting all the oceans completely is necessary to answer the question, is a woo tactic designed to sustain the belief in a possibility, a "woo of the gaps" methodology. There's no biological foundation for belief in such things as mer-people ; on general principles, there's no reason to search every inch of the ocean to find what doesn't plausibly exist to be found. Cassidy (Flaccon) tried that tactic to support her claims (here and here) that things she heard in radio broadcasts (among other things) were meaningful messages from a spirit world; when it was shown that at least one (a Wolfman Jack commercial, IIRC) wasn't actually directed to her, and others were easily explainable as aural pareidolia, her response was to demand that every single other one of her examples be scrutinized, and could not accept that it simply wasn't necessary to debunk every specific one when debunking on general principles is sufficient. Maartenn100 is playing essentially the same game when he continues to trot out his little anecdotes about NDES- "oh, yeah? What about this one!" They're all the same thing, and we don't need to look at every single example- to search the entire ocean- to show it.
 
The Shrike said:
I effectively dealt with this thread in the first response to the OP. Why is this still going?
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Yes but you provided no proof that they don't exist. Therefore, they exist.

You work for the gubmint or something? Trying to cover it up?
 
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