Sea cow `sirens' fuel mermaid mythology

[UM-Bot]

The poor, portly manatee, having to endure this gibe time and again: "The early explorers thought manatees were mermaids. Guess they'd been at sea a little too long!"Local tour guides have their own versions of the line and the Internet offers dozens more.

View: Full Article | Source: Sun Sentinel

[Welsh Shaun]

I'm sorry, but if I had been away at sea for twenty years, drunk a bottle of rum or two and was loosing my marbles a manatee would not tempt me.

Obviously I cant speak for everyone?

Edited December 26, 2005 by Welsh Shaun

[SureFire]

Thats kinda' funny, could you imagine finding one of those attractive? However, once again, I would like to see what it would be like if we were to cross genes with one of these creatures. Either a 3,000 lb swiming human or something really cool, worth a shot?

[Welsh Shaun]

You first

[SureFire]

I'd subject myself to a line of tests, sure why not. My first year in the Military I was a human test subject for the test line of Anthrax, Smallpox, and a few other things I can't recall. I fully back Human testing, it is the only way for us to progress, too bad we have such restrictive guidelines! :angry2:

[rickfury188]

Haha, any man that thinks a manatee is hot needs to get off the boat, and into the doctor's office.

[SureFire]

Glad i'm Army not Navy....

[rhylin]

Glad i'm Army not Navy....

hahaha!

Oh man.. *sigh* anyways that is wicked funny men thought mermaids were manatees... how could you even see similarities....then again how do we know what mermaids look like... they don't even exist

So I guess manatees would look like merpeople?

[MoonFox]

I do not think that manatees are what started the mermaid myth. Whether mermaids exist or not, and no matter how drunk someone is...

A glompy, ugly, bald, aquatic gray thing can not be mistaken as a beautiful woman with a fish tail.....

Just like I disagree that the 'rhinoceros' started the unicorn stories (rhinoceros cannot be mistaken as a thin, graceful little goat/deer-like creature with a long spiraling horn)

Whoever concluded that glompy manatees were what started the mermaid myth was more drunk than those sailors who actually saw mermaids....

[ROGER]

Homer wrote of SIRENS in his book "The Odyssey" , and I am fairly sure there are no Manatees in the Mediterranean Sea. So what would spark the story there?

Of course the ancient Greeks also wrote of half man / Half goat , like "Pan".

And we know where that idea came from!

[mike^_^]

where did it come from?

[dragonlady_mothman]

The Odyssy described sirens as being horrible, harpy-like bird women, so ugly that when Odessues looked at them, it broke the spell.

If they didnt have feathers, that manatee might work...but unless Homer was playing around with his own myths, I dont think mermaids and sirens are the same thing.

Edited December 30, 2005 by dragonlady_mothman

[bubs_satansreject]

*amused* those things are hot!

LMAO.... is this what desperation and lack of female contact with a drink will drive men to?

[Rykster]

Homer wrote of SIRENS in his book "The Odyssey" , and I am fairly sure there are no Manatees in the Mediterranean Sea. So what would spark the story there?

Baby pleisiosaurs perhaps?

[Purplos]

WHy manatees? I could *almost* see some drunken desperate men thinking some of the sleaker seals (not navy seals - ha ha) could be mermaids. Their faces are much prettier than manatee faces and they also would lounge around on rocky coasts unlike manatees.

Also, way back then in the age of discovery, men liked their women plumper - none of this bulemic scrawniness that is so in today.

[dragonlady_mothman]

Baby pleisiosaurs perhaps?

When he did, he wrote them as bird-women, like harpies, didn't he?