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XNinjaRed — The Mermaid Problem
Published: 2010-02-26 17:17:26 +0000 UTC; Views: 44687; Favourites: 158; Downloads: 354
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Of course, they're fantasy creatures, so you're not supposed to look at it logically, but just try and you'll see the anatomical problems just by thinking about it!Ami is a character by .
Mermaid Ami concept and Cho character by aka Me.
Request more mystical creatures for me to criticize if you know some.
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Comments: 101
I guess it boils down to the type of mermaid you have encountered. I for one have seen particularly scary ones. Dont ask me how they fit in the criteria though. XD
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Here, I wrote a paper on this.
It doesn't cover all of it, but it covers about half of it.
If you have any more question, please, PLEASE! Ask me. I love Mermaids.
[link]
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I see your paper and I raise you mine
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I reject your paper. It tramples all over Mermaid folklore. Mermaids are mammalian with chordate qualities.
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I they reproduce like fish then it goes like this:
Guy:So, are you ready?
Mermaid:Sure! (releases a cloud of eggs)*SPLURT!*
Guy:AAAAAAAAHHHHH-wat-AAAAHHHH
Mermaid:They're eggs silly. Fertilize them. Then GET THE HELL OUT!!.
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I have an awnser for every one of those questions, from both angles.
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my theory? Mammal-like aquatic reptiles. We know aquatic reptiles existed (plesiosaurs for example). There had to be a transition between mammal and reptile somewhere, so why not have mermaids branch off here and then go aquatic? This would make them not fish at all. Instead they'd be able to have hair and "scales" (scutes) similar to how rats have "scales" on their tail and hair on their body, and it's possible that they would be kinda reverse lungfish in how they breathe - normally breathing underwater but capable of dealing with air. As for the bras, well... we could go with the Warcraft Naga approach and have them be wierd scaly-nesses to protect tender glands or turn the males on, or we could go with the Ursula approach - lower part extends all the way up to the bust - or we could just use seaweed bra instead of shell bra and say it's a cultural thing.
I overthink these sorts of things.
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There's no reason a mammal can't have scales... look at pangolans.
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You forgot, "How can they talk underwater?" Or, "How do they know English/(the language of the sailor or whatever they encounter)?" You should do griffins next. Or centaurs.
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Aw, i'd request one but it might be very very late.
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Actually... humans do the same thing with regards to clothing.
We wear the skin of dead animals. We keep dogs and cats as pets.
Hell, we sometimes even eat dogs and cats.
Nobody really complains about the contradiction.
Oh, and the bras are probably to make them hydrodynamic. While that might seem retarded in terms of evolution, it isn't. It's the peacock scenario, where a desired trait is overly selected to the point where it interferes with natural functioning. So long as mates continue to desire larger tail feathers, the positive feedback loop continues.
And I always thought their gills were where their lungs would be... and that they could breathe air in the same way a mudskipper does. So long as their gills are moist, they can breathe air.
But in general, yeah, good points.
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Your reply brings up a fascinating question: Why don't any mermaids wear shark skin?! The denticles on their skin channel water through them in little streams that cut down drag. A mermaid (obviously not as hydrodynamic as fish and usually depicted as being smarter) should leap at the opportunity to wear shark skin! Don't you agree that they'd look pretty badass with shark skin?!
P.S. Judging by your signature, you'd like this song/ video [link]
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Actually, a fish shouldn't be bothered by wearing clams. Clams belong to a different phylum. [Shotbrickmaulkeelhaulkeel'd]
Nonetheless, I couldn't help but giggle over this xDDDD
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There's actually a mammal with scales, called a Pagolin, so the mermaid being a mammal is not so far-fetched. Does this help or raise more questions?
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Well, there are a number of fish species that give birth to live young... so I prefer to think they give birth. XD
The shellfish bra idea has always made me wince. It just seems like they'd hurt. DX
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well, reportedly mermaids are based on manatee sightings and how anybody could get Half-human with a fish tail from viewing a manatee will forever be much more of a mystery to me than any of these questions, so...
Give birth, though I find the eggs options much cooler now that I think about it.
Clams aren't fish, fish are vertebrates, clams definitely aren't. (Not that this prevents them from talking/being "people" in animated things, so the assumption would probably be that the mermaids collect empty shells.) I find the option of some kind of matural (of course necessarily flexible in case of lactation, maybe parts fall off?) attached (whether from birth on, or appearing during puberty) tissue fascinating.
Protection/Stabilization (I take it you've never been swimming naked? Things float around is what I'm saying.)
See above
Those things WOULD have to be fitted perfectly, otherwise: OUCH!
How do non shell bra's make sense from an evolutionary standpoint? Maybe increased attrectiveness to males (due to lack of saggyness)???
Haven't you heard: It's all intelligent design nowadays! (Kill me now for saying this, please.)
Fishmals? I'd say mammals though.
EVOLUTIONS!!! Bitten by radioactive fish!!!
Or it's just misrepresentation in fiction! (Grey tails for everybody would look so BORING, colourful scales are MUCH PRETTIER!!!)
Hidden by the shell-bras? Those aren't actually boobs under there! (And the shells have holes to facilitate circulation.)
/On their necks.
/Inside the thorax - Though then the question becomes: Where are their lungs? Maybe they actually evolved in a way that (partially, so air breathing is retained in reduced capacity) converted their lungs into being able to breathe underwater, which wouldn't necessarily look exactly like gills. (Though is assumes evolution from mammals - so, no fishtail at all.)
Reproductive organs are usually close to the center of gravity because carrying a baby anywhere else would seriously compromise mobility (just imagine it). I'd imagine this would hold true here, so close to the "joining point" (ok, very bad pun). Possibly concealed in such a way as it is with dolphins (though maybe horizontal instead of vertical and exactly at the "joint" and therefore mostly invisible).
The best explanation (and I can't believe I actually typed up all of the above, please forgive me) is still: MAGIC, that's totally the most historically accurate option too, as that's totally the explanation of the people who came up with the idea (also, looking at manatees and seeing mermaids totally requires magic of some form (possibly liquid...).
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that is awesome XD. Maybe they're really reptiles that resemble humans and fish, and are amphibians to boot.
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I'll tell you what they were thinking.
They were thinking that manatees start looking pretty hot after going months without seeing a woman.
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The bras are clearly naturally-forming shells that can protect the sensitive areas like hearts and inner organs. Most prominently, though they protect the supposed 'breasts.'
In fact, their 'breasts' are merely stores of fatty tissue and hydrogen-producing glands used to effect buoyancy. They do not lactate, for that would not work underwater and there is a shell in the way.
They are not born with the shells, but they and their breasts begin developing 2-6 weeks after birth.
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Ami looks quite...nice.
<_<
>_>
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-Give birth.
-Clams aren't fish. They also weren't necessarily killed for their shells by the mermaids.
-Real life answer: censors. In-universe answer: to protect sensitive spots.
-Extremely doubtful. That's like saying humans are born with underwear.
-Search through the dead bivalves for shells that comfortably fit or at least cover enough.
-See above.
-Mythical beings laugh at evolution.
-Technically mammals, because the important half is human.
-Because half of them are human, and humans have breasts.
-Because the half that isn't human is a fish. Note that many varieties of merfolk exist (dolphin, whale, seahorse, jellyfish, octopus, eel, etc).
-Their lungs are most likely adapted to work with water instead of air.
-Extremely efficient at processing oxygen, red blood cells contain more hemoglobin (similar to horses and crocodiles).
-In the same place as on humans, modified somewhat. Mermen have their genitals inside the body and extend the penis for mating, like whales and dolphins do. Females have vulvas, modified for both underwater and positioning (angled down a bit to allow the penis to insert more easily). Again, censors disallow showing merfolk genitalia.
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The bra can be blamed on trying to make them child friendly (since seeing breasts will apparently cause irreversible harm to the child. God I hate censors sometimes)
As for the genital question, they may not actually have fish tails but dugong (sp?) tails instead, and they apparently have genitalia similar to that of a humans (at least, the females do). Made even more plausible since mermaid sightings apparently were just sightings of dugongs
Also, there is a nasty skin defect that leads to 'scales' of sorts, so all in all, almost everything is sound. The only real bullshit with mermaids is the ability to breath underwater
Hell, if a baby was born with the right defects and survived, they could be a real life mermaid (although they couldn't live under water indefinitely). Mind you, the chances of a baby being born with fused legs AND harlequin type ichthyosis AND surviving the icthyosis (from what I have read and seen, it is very, VERY likely to kill the child), well...
By the way, the pictures of Harlequins are very disturbing. So I don't recommend looking them up
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That's a very disturbing idea, but even as unlikely as that combination of birth defects is, it doesn't come close to creating a mermaid. Not only is breathing underwater absolutely critical to being considered a mermaid, but ichthyosis is far from fish scales.
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Still, it is the closest we can get :3
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Different sources have different Mermaids. Many of them give answers to at least some of questions, and for most at least some of those questions aren't relavent (ie: their Mermaids don't wear bras, or arn't friends with fish). Look up the TV Tropes pages 'Our Mermaids Are Different' and 'Mermaid Problem' for examples.
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Don't forget about the platypus. Just because you are a mammal doesn't mean there are rules you have to follow.
It would be really hard to keep water out of their noses and lungs if they live underwater all day, so there is no way they have two separate breathing systems with one of them being like ours. They would definitely fill their lungs with water because otherwise it would be impractical to have lungs.
They just need some way to let the water flow out of their lungs, like a connection to some orifices in their lower bodies, hidden in the scales. By letting the water flow through like that, the lungs can serve the purpose of gills underwater, and can drain easily to breath air when popping up to wave to sailors. They just need a mechanism for sealing off the extra openings of the lungs, like bagpipes.
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Well, being a mammal only means that you have to lactate... Although the boobage is rather silly all the same.
Also, the idea of bagpipe lungs in inexplicably amusing. O_o
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If you actually think of their lungs like bagpipes, it really helps in understanding how they could talk underwater. They can use their lungs to makes sounds with water just like bagpipes make sounds with air.
As long as they are using their lungs to breath water instead of gills, they don't have to keep their mouths closed under water, just as confirmed by countless cartoons. They would actually have to suck in water just to breathe.
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It does! Cool. It would be really distorted over long distances though... They probably don't communicate through sound alone. Maybe... bioluminesence? And a really strict grammar structure? ;_; Would make for odd games of Operator, at least.
Holy crap, IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW. For freshies, anyway. Salties still have the issue of salt being Very Bad News for lungs... maybe they have a filtration system before the lungs? They'd have to eat a lot to make up for the salt build-up in addition to osmosis, though...
Maybe they sneeze salt to get rid of some of it.
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Any sea creature has to be adapted to life with a salt/water ratio that matches the water it lives in. Gills would be just as vulnerable to salt as lungs, if the owner doesn't have the necessary chemistry. I haven't been able to find how humans would have to change to survive with more salt in our bodies, but I doubt it would be anything that would prevent a mermaid from having a classic appearance.
This should be researched before anyone draws another mermaid or writes another mermaid story.
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I though that the exact salt/water ratio in seawater was lethal to most life forms. Salt water is REALLY REALLY salty. It's also why tossing a saltwater fish into a freshwater aquarium is a Bad Idea--between the constantly drinking water, osmosis and not urinating frequently, they die from water poisoning. It's certianly CLOSER to the surrounding area, but, IIRC the major issue is drinking habits and whether or not the kidneys adapt--after all, there are several fish species that can go to and from salt water and freshwater without any ill effects that I can remember, and if it was all about the inate ratio they wouldn't be able to do that. I think the salt would coat the lungs when they weren't breathing water, though, which is why I brought it up--How does the body flush away the salt in that area? The only fish that can breath out of water that I know of are freshwater...
...jesus fuck that got long. And is composed entirely of half-forgotten oceanography classes. @_@;;
YES. Curse you, you've given me an excuse to delay my cephalopod-people story. Of course, they seem to have developed in a freaking estuary, given the main character's water preferance. >_< Baaaaah. Tempted to chalk that one up to "shut up and look at the pretty colors."
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Upon further research, I realize that you're right. Seawater fish must have less salt in their body water than in regular seawater in order to stay alive. Even so, the problem is not as great as you make it out to be. Breathing is a process of diffusion which means fluids moving from where they have high concentrations into where they have low concentrations to even things out. For this to happen, you need to have very thin barriers between the inside of the body and the outside so that diffusion can happen freely. (I expect that animals have lungs so that the thin barrier can be internal for defensive purposes.) Allowing diffusion means that the creature doesn't control what goes in and out; there is no filtering of the bad stuff. We expend the oxygen that we have so that there is less oxygen in us than in the air, so diffusion brings oxygen in, and the reverse happens with carbon dioxide. Seawater fish are forced to constantly absorb salt in the same way. They keep themselves alive by having organs to separate salt from water in their systems so they can be constantly pumping salt back out to keep themselves balanced. The salt-removal organ can be anything, anywhere in their bodies. As long as you keep your salt level low enough, it's not harmful to absorb salt.
This also means that salt does not coat anything. Don't think of it like dust in the water; salt is dissolved, part of the water, and constantly being absorbed by the mermaid.
On the other hand, you can't breathe air properly when you have water in your lungs. That is why mermaids would have to have a system for allowing the water to drain out of their lungs, but I'm not sure if that's enough. Human lungs react badly to having even a small amount of water in them and it seems impactical to drain lungs to the point of not being even a little wet every time a mermaid pokes her head above the surface. (She would at least have to hold her breath for a moment while converting from one breathing mode to the other.)
I imagine that it's possible for lungs to be modified somehow so they are able to breathe air with a small amount of water. It would require more research to know just how different those lungs would be from ours.
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|D I fully admit that I'm a bit out of my depth here. BUT IT'S EDUCATIONAL FOR ME.
In reterospect, I was probably remembering how even dissolved things can stick to the sides of something--I'm thinking hard water here. HOWEVER I also admit to not really remembering how the dissolved minerals stick to the side of things.
Mebbe they could absorb oxygen through their skin, like frogs? They'd need really clean water, though... But that could be a plot point.
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It's possible for mermaids to absorb oxygen through their skin like frogs, but highly undesirable. It means that their skin has to be very thin, so you have to give up the classic mermaid look. Having such thin skin makes them much more vulnerable to injury than humans and most sea creatures.
They also need a certain amount of breathing surface for their mass and energy requirements. Frogs get away with smooth skin because they are small and need little energy. On the other hand, a fish have highly folded gill surfaces, so even though their gills looks small they have huge surface areas. If even the entire surface of a fishes skin were replaced with frog skin, the fish would probably not get enough osmosis to survive, and this gets worse for larger fish.
Frogs and mermaids are opposites in a way. Mermaids exert most of their energy in the ocean and just sit on rocks on the surface, while frogs leap and flick their tongues on the surface, which I expect is most of their energy. Frogs have lungs for breathing air, so they only depend upon their surface skin for oxygen under water. Also, the internet seems to think that at least some frogs can only stay underwater for a limited amount of time before they need air to survive.
Frogs seal up to prevent water from getting into their lungs. They have noses that can close. I have yet to discover how a frog deals with water getting into its lungs, but that it clearly very important. Unfortunately, I suspect that they die, considering how carefully they protect themselves from it.
Taking all that together, a mermaid frog would need really big, really thin skin to get the osmosis she needed to breath. I imagine she would be a thousand times as wrinkly as an old woman, or have huge flaps of skin. And all of that skin would be very delicate, because the thicker her skin is the more she needs. Fortunately, if she really did have that sort of skin, she probably wouldn't need lungs for breathing air; getting oxygen from the water is harder than getting it from the air, so if you can do the former then the latter is easily believable.
This is really making me want to write a mermaid story, just as soon as I can come up with some sort of plot.
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I thought of a solution to that thin skin thing .
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I was actually thinking using the skin for prolonging the underwater stay (forgot that the noses need to close, derp), but the untraditional mermaid look fascinates me to no end. The idea of them being really weird looking is so much more interesting to me than the thing most people think of when they think mermaid. *__*
Yay, I'm not alone. xD
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So you a thinking of mermaids who not only look nontraditional, but need to come to the surface to breathe because they only have a limited ability to breathe underwater? That's too untraditional for my taste.
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Actually the skin-breathing only thing and the combo-breathing were unrelated in my head. So I had both a more normal mermaid and a strange-looking one. OH HO HO MY WORDS ARE CLEAR AS LEAD.
But my mermaids/mermaid-like creatures have been known to get really, really odd looking. Because it's more fun for me that way.
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You do realize the mermaid I'm criticizing in this art is not of the nontraditional Mermaids you're talking about but of the Traditional Mermaids you see on television.
You can try to justify it all you want, but the matter of the fact still remains that Mermaids don't make sense.
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Yeah, we know. It's just fun to try to figure out ways to make them make a little bit MORE sense.
Sorry if you dislike the blathering. It was (for me at least) for the lulz, and I found it to be rather educational.
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I believe that this will interest you. It's educational, too!
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Oh I don't mind, I'm just saying.
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What about two sets of lungs, one for water and one for air, and a nose somewhat similar to a frogs? Except instead of just plain closing, the mermaid has sensors in its mouth that can detect whether her head's submerged or not, and upon all of said sensors coming into contact with water for a certain period of time (like, say, one and a half seconds), the air tubes connected to one set of lungs close, while the ones connected to the other lungs open; conversely, upon surfacing, she'd have to spit out any water in her mouth so the sensors would detect air and switch to her air-lungs. This would necessitate that the mermaid keep its nose above water and open its mouth for a short period when going underwater, or if she didn't have time for that (such as if a speedboat was coming at her head), she'd have to exhale through her nose, with mouth wide open, until she switched to her water-lungs to prevent getting water in the air ones; conversely, she would also have to exhale if she didn't have time for a controlled surfacing to keep from getting air in her water-lungs. Due to increased pressure sensitivity, her air-lungs would be in the tail section, which is better protected from the, well, pressures of deep-sea diving.
This would also mean that you could suffocate a mermaid by filling her mouth with water and keeping her from swallowing it (if she's surfaced), or by keeping her from being able to open her mouth when she surfaces, but you probably don't have any use for that information.
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-I think they give birth
-It's not necessary the do befriend with all types of fishes
-As they are half humans, they might have some shyness level. Anyway, not all mermaids wears a bra, that's used as a censorship way for show them in more public ways, so they don't born with it.
Evolution is funny, everyone adapts to what they need, there can be some theories XD.
They can be a mix of both mammals and fish (their gills might be on the back of their neck or somewhere near, but hidden), and the breast is for feed they newborns
So, they are able to breathe underwater and "fresh" air
but I think there must be a kind of little process on the adaption mode between breathing in water and air like empty their lungs.
Hope this answers are somewhat logic, it's true that they are fantasy, but that doesn't mean they lack logic
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Technically these questions aren't meant to be taken seriously either.
But if they give birth, that would be illogical considering that IF they had reproductive organs, it would be on the fish part, which wouldn't be logical to give birth, unless their tail parts are based on Dolphins, which still wouldn't make sense considering they have scales.
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details details XD
anyway, I answered because I was bored... and the mermaid looks curte X3
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What about unichorns?
I mean... I don't think that spear on their forehead comes in handy when they're grazing. XD
Especially Gryphons!
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Its even more confusing when you consider mermen
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