Disney’s 1989 popular animation The Little Mermaid reenacted these very childhood fantasies in all of us. Lonely sailors and the sea’s romance fueled ocean voyagers’ imaginations creating mystifying stories for young and old alike for centuries about a lovely, enchanting creature. Sadly because of over hunting, they were nearly extinct and are under the Endangered Species Act. Not a bad kind of life, eh? Because they are mammals, then they must surface for air about every 3-5 minutes, but while they sleep they may remain submerged for as long as 20 minutes. On his first voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus, sailing near the. Most of their time spent eating, resting, and traveling. Creatures such as the manatee or the dugong have probably been mistaken for. These large, gray plant-eating, aquatic mammals can grow to be 10 feet long, can weigh 800 –1,2000 pounds, and have a lifespan of 60 years. They are considered to be gentle and slow-moving animals. Columbus reported that they “came quite high out of the water but were not as pretty as they are depicted…” (Cherry, 1995)īeauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I wouldn’t go so far to say manatee are beautiful. In fact, Christopher Columbus even wrote about mermaids in his log on his voyage to the New World. Their imagination interpreted - half girl, half-fish. The seaman spotted creatures submerged beneath the seas’ folds with a head, arms(flippers), and the back half a fish tail. One can only imagine where their thoughts were most of the time. Sailors spent months on end out on the ocean without the company of… the softer sex. For a manatee captured and examined in the Sierra Leone estuary in 1582. What did they see? You may know the answer to this $100,000 question already but, if not, then this is what they saw…the magnificent manatee! See Christopher Columbus and the Portuguese, Journal of the American. Okay, beautiful, yeah, but not what long ago sailors saw. While Hannah isn’t the mermaid from a bygone era of sailors’ beautiful sirens. What’s truly cool about Hannah is her ability to co-exist with animals of the deep.
She can dive 50 feet beneath the surface of the ocean on one single breath before resurfacing. Yeah, what’s she been smoking? you’re saying. Honestly, I found a modern-day mermaid. Lone Ranger rides the airways.Do you remember daydreaming about mermaids? For years, I always believed mermaids are an old sailor’s over-worked imagination. I’ll touch base on that late. During my research for today’s Alphabe-Thursday post, I discovered a real-life mermaid.Living conditions did not carry any bragging rights and not only were men starved for food but also female companionship. Remember, as mentioned in the beginning, it was not unusual for sailors to be aboard ship for months and months at a time. At least he thought they were mermaids, but they were actually our beloved. Then, on top of all that, the female manatees also have two breasts, one under each armpit. (WFLA) Mermaids were spotted 527 years ago today by Christopher Columbus. Human-like eyes and face in the right light, could this add further to the
Isn't this much the same as how a mermaid is depicted? If a manatee's head did surface so that a sailor could see the vaguely Published Image Via Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images Claim: Evidence exists that some early seafarers and colonial explorers may have mistaken manatees for the mythical half-fish. Keep in mind that for the most part, manatees remain underwater where visibility reveals a back and tail with no dorsal fin. Let's pause for a moment and give a little credit to the possibility of this misinterpretation being legitimate. How could this mistake even possibly be made? The journal entry has been transcribed varying in wording to some degree: " (the mermaids) not half as beautiful as they are painted," " the mermaids were not as pretty as imagined," and " mermaids were by no means as beautiful as depicted in folk tales." Columbus described what he saw, or thought he saw, in his journal. In 1493, while anchored in the Caribbean, he reportedly saw three "mermaids" swimming in the water. Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: 1492, 1493, 14. Columbus accidentally stumbled upon the Americas as he searched for a direct water route west from Europe to Asia.
He actually did not 'discover' the New World for it had already been inhabited by millions of people. Italian explorer Christopher Columbus is accredited with the discovery of the "Americas" or the New World in 1492. They later became associated with mermaids).īack to Columbus mistaking manatees for mermaids. (even though the Sirens were originally part woman and These mermaids belong to the order Sirenia,
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