Animal Planet’s Found Mermaids

Apparently finding success with their show Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, Animal Planet broadcast another provocative “Docu-Fiction” in May, 2012, later shown on The Discovery Channel, called Mermaids: The Body Found. Taking its cue from the fact that legends of mermaids are noted all over the planet, this ingenious show imagines how mer-people might have evolved, hypothesizing that proto-humans who turned to the sea instead of land might have adapted themselves into aquatic humanoids, living occasionally glimpsed, but essentially secretively and mysteriously. (The show’s premise is also a nod towards the “Aquatic Ape” theory, which wonders if early humans did not spend time adapting themselves to living in watery environments- explaining, for instance, why humans lost their body-hair, which would be an impediment to sleek swimming, as well as why  human babies are born plump with baby-fat: insulation against watery temperatures.)

Some of the videos provided make fascinating mini-movies, showing these intrepid “mer-humans” in a struggle to survive the challenges of marine life- such as prehistoric sharks- as surely as early humans were beset by land predators. An especially inspirational one- one that strikes me as oddly “Pagan” in its sense- is the one where a brave mer-scout saves his tribal “pod” by offering himself as a sacrifice to a monster-shark, enabling his mer-people to swim away to safety, hopefully to survive another day (however day is measured when one lives in the ocean). Projecting a mythology upon these early “aquatic humans,” one imagines that such an individual would be remembered as a brave sea-warrior, and hero to his pod-tribe. It is a remarkable “alternative perspective” to human (sea-human) courage, and even early sea-human spirituality.