CW: Implied Harm to Animals, Death, Brief mention of Covid-19
Where are the mermaids? Why aren’t they filing their taxes? I’ll tell you why: GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY. They talked all about it in this documentary the ANIMAL PLANET showed back in— what’s that? It wasn’t a real documentary? It’s a pseudodocumentary that had a hand in eroding media literacy and fostering distrust in government-backed science?! Now hold on…
So when we were doing this episode, Karen made a comment about how Christopher Columbus maybe didn’t know what a mermaid was supposed to look like and that’s why he fell for the manatee/dugong. And that lead to a discussion about the very old and widespread portrayal of mermaids and sirens in art throughout history. So let’s just start with that. This link will take you to a lot of images of mermaids in art from the very ancient to more modern.
Here are just a few that I had pulled out of the article for them to look at.
This is just the NOAA statement about how mermaids aren’t real.
This looks at the history of the belief in mermaids. The article explores how mermaid myths from European melusines to Japanese ningyo and Irish merrow reflect human fascination with the unknown, mixing folklore, cultural symbolism, and sailors’ misidentifications of marine animals. Even though mermaids aren’t real, their stories reveal much about human imagination, fear, and our relationship with the sea.
The piece traces how mermaid myths go back thousands of years, appearing in ancient stories across many cultures from water‑spirits in Africa to legendary creatures in Europe and Asia. It explains that famous “sightings,” including one by Christopher Columbus, were almost certainly misidentifications of marine mammals like manatees or dugongs rather than actual merfolk. The article also highlights the NOAA statement.
Let’s looks at some more pictures as we move into the modern day. People are faking mermaids since the 1800s or so. We have the Feejee/Fiji mermaid, the Hull Mermaid, Banff Mermaid, and this one from the Enjuin temple are pictures I have for you, but there’s lots more out in the world.
This article looks at the Japanese mermaid from the Enjuin temple where they really looked into what it was made out of. What this mermaid was made of is the same thing they all are, which is largely paper mache, monkey bones, fish scales, and other things like that.
Then we can go into the modern fakery with the Animal Planet documentary Mermaids: The Body Found. I have a little clip from it. It’s not really a trailer in the modern sense but it’s something. Very silly.
At the end of the episode, we talked about the harm that fake documentaries like these do. They erode the public’s trust in authority figures they trust, like reputable TV channels like Animal Planet used to be or how the History channel used to be or Discovery, or news sites or government bodies.
This article talks about that. The article argues that “Mermaids: The Body Found,” presented in the style of a legitimate nature‑documentary, had real-world consequences beyond just entertainment. By mixing genuine‑looking footage, real institutions (like NOAA) and fictional interviews with actors, the show blurred the line between fact and fiction and many viewers ended up believing mermaids were real. Because the presentation was so convincing, it helped fuel distrust toward real science and institutions. The article warns that when networks trade credibility for shock value it undermines public trust and can make people more susceptible to misinformation even on serious issues like climate change, conservation, or public‑health science. This documentary was so successful it really paved the way for this network and others like it, like the History channel, to start making more and more fake documentaries presented as fact.
This show is more than a hoax. It’s a cautionary example of how entertainment packaged as “reality” can warp public understanding and erode faith in actual scientific knowledge. That’s what this article is about.
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