What If Mermaids Were Real?

Publish date: 2024-05-07

The "Mermaids" mockumentaries extrapolate on the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, which states the reason humans are so hairless compared to other mammals is because at one point, our ancestors temporarily took to water long enough for natural selection to favor sleek skin. Mermaids are, therefore, humans that never went back to land.

And that means mermaids have lungs, organs that even whales (which have been aquatic for 50 million years) have yet to lose (our genus, Homo, is only 1.5 to 2.5 million years old). Mermaids would have to come up to breathe on the regular. If they did this, it can be inferred that sightings would have been so common, consistent, and from so many different sources across the planet that from the time records began to now, the existence of mermaids would be scientific fact, even if a specimen was never caught.

What about lungs combined with gills? Such a physical adaptation is depicted in "Waterworld," where Kevin Costner's protagonist, essentially a midpoint between human and merfolk, sports a set of gills behind his ears. This is not entirely Hollywood folly; after all, ears evolved from gills (via LiveScience), and evolutionary throwbacks, called atavisms, are not unheard of. However, in reality, only the lungfish has fully functional lungs and gills, but even it must return to the water to stay hydrated. No human-sized creature has two mutually exclusive respiratory systems.

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