This week, Animal Planet aired “Mermaids: The New Evidence” the second fake documentary in their series about mermaids. After complaining about the ridiculous show and the associated devastating effects on science literacy*, we decided to watch the re-air together and live-tweet it. The goal was to get real scientific information into the twitter conversation associated with the show. The Storify of our contributions to the discussion is below.
* Lots of people think that the admittedly fake documentary is real. Search the twitter hashtag #Mermaids and you’ll see literally hundreds of examples of this. These are not included in the Storify in the interest of not being cruel to strangers.
But Daryl Hannah is a mermaid! Oh, I am so disappointed. Mermaids aren’t realllllll. Wah. Mermaids? Really? And you can get boson higgs particles in a box of Cracker Jacks too. Oh wait, I just saw a Fairy in my garden behind that old armoire cabinet with the big Lion in it next to the funny looking kid with the glasses and the stupid little stick. MEDS people! Meds! Or better yet, figure out some new ways to add chlorine to your personal gene pool.
David. Don’t argue with idiots. They only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. I stole that saying and all but it applies.
Animal Planet is not interested in a small group of people with scientific reasoning… they are interested in a big group of shallow brains who bring them economic benefits. Many of the programs on AP/Nat Geo and Discovery sucks!
It’s a good thing you guys were doing this, I’m sure you guys actually helped a lot of people realize this is all a load of crap!
And that you buys are getting the word out about sharks and real world problems! What I will say is that I do think the Aquatic Ape Theory COULD be somewhat real and that COULD have led to a species we do not know of today. After all, looking back on evolution many marine animals evolved into what they are now from land animals, like whales.
I don’t believe in the classic “mermaids,” but I’m not going to say there isn’t a possibility that an aquatic ape species unknown to science isn’t possible, there’s nothing worse then acting like us humans know everything and having a closed mind to new ideas. I don’t believe the legends of mermaids were literally something we completely made up, I don’t think we could really just come up with this legend without any type of origin or reason.