🧜Mermaids - Part Two - Hoaxes & Fakes 🧜

Are mermaids real?

Or are they simply figments of our overactive imaginations?

This is PART TWO of the series: Mermaids. Real or Fake?

For part one: Mermaids- Part One - The Real.

TL; DW (Too Long; Didn't Watch)

16th Century AD - Jenny Hanivers - the carcass of taxidermied rays, skates, or guitarfish that have been modified and subsequently dried, resulting in a grotesque preserved specimen. Made popular in Japan by fisherman in the 1550s, many still sold and created today.
19th Century AD - Fiji Mermaid - Made famous by P.T. Barnum in the 1800s. The original was thought to have been created in 1810 by a Japanese fisherman, crossing many hands before making it to Barnum's American Museum in New York in 1842. A fire of 1865 took that creation, but many more have filled its shoes.
1915 - The Banff Merman - Little is known about this specimen, aside from it being very similar to the Fiji mermaid. It still sits on the same shop shelf in Banff, Canada as it did back in 1915.
2013 - On Stranger Tides Mermaid- Pirates of the Caribean (from 2011). Images of these prop mermaids surfaced around 2013, only to be proven false.
2012-2013 - Mermaid: The Body Found - Mockumentary by Animal Planet and The Discovery Channel. This almost broke the internet. It came out in 2011, set in 2016 (the future). It was done very well. So well, in fact, many were angered by being tricked and vowed to never support the stations again. Didn't stop them from playing the movie in subsequent years.
2016 - Decaying Yarmouth Mermaid - Images and video were shared on Facebook with the caption "Today at Great Yarmouth we found what looks like a dead Mermaid washed up on the beach." Turns out, the poster, Paul Jones was also the creator of the specimen. Who would have thought? 🤔
2015 (2008) - Nerina - "Mermaid found on Beach after hurricane" - A video came into circulation (by her creator), Juan Cabana, and quickly went viral without explanation. The artist has created MANY specimens out of found fish parts that have washed up on the beach. Here's his website for more crazy pictures: The Art of Juan Cabana