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So, here we are once again. Let's face it, this is going to happen a lot, it's the Medieval-Renaissance Fantasy Guild (that we've as yet not managed to re-name - oh well). We discuss fantasy topics inside out and we're not about to change our stripes any time soon.

1.) If you're going to have merfolk, they've got to be adapted to living in water.

2.) If they're primarily water dwellers, then having them breathe air all of the time is stupid. If they're going to live underwater, then they'll need to have gills. I would say, like most marine creatures, they would also be able to breathe air as well.

3.) In my opinion, they're NOT going to look like Ariel, her family and all of the other merfolk in Tritan's kingdom. Human skin doesn't have the water resistance capabilities that are necessary, and you've also got to think about temperature. Merfolk will need different components in their skin. Many would probably have scales like fish, along with fins for obvious reasons.

4.) Depending on the kind of climate they live in, they'll also need to have skin that can adapt to different water temperatures, and also considering that humans can only survive in water for as many minutes as there are degrees of temperature, you've got to take that into account as well.

For example, if the sea temperature is 7 degrees, you've got about seven minutes before hypothermia sets in and ultimately you die. If you're somewhere warmer like the Caribbean, then you're going to have quite a bit longer.

DISCUSS.

I only believe in evolution within a species, which also separates species that are cousins (aka, humans and primates). I don't believe that we were once monkeys. As a christian, I believe what the Bible says, which is that God fashioned human beings originally from clay and breathed life into them. Skin is not clay, evidently, but that theory suggests that Adam and Eve were originally created that way. However, I do believe we are related to primates. I just don't believe we evolved from them.

Neither do I believe that some land animals suddenly decided they wanted to be aquatic and vice versa, and therefore thought "oh I'll need this that and the other to be able to survive there" and then grew the appropriate limbs and altered their DNA in order to do so.

People can believe what they want in the long run, and I respect your theory fully because it's another individual notion. I just don't believe in it in reality personally. wink

I believe Adam and Eve existed, but I understand your point on the fact that if we all came from them originally then we're effectively all be in-bred which just seems wrong on so many levels and therefore concur with that side of it.

Anyway, regarding merfolk, glad you're of the same opinion Hypno. smile

To me, it makes more sense for them to look relatively like the ones in the picture above than like the favourite, conventional image. I understand what was being said about marine creatures that have tails which flip up and down on the level of evolution though. Although I don't believe in it in that respect, I can see the logic if that happened to be the case. When we swim underwater, especially when diving, we don't always do the frog-like breaststroke. We'll keep our feet together and flick our legs up and down. However, if we throw general evolution out of the window and consider only evolution within a species, did anyone think that these creatures may have been originally designed that way or designed to a point where they would evolve into what they are today (but ONLY within their own species)?

Wow. Totally didn't see that one coming. I actually figured this would be the one place on Gaia where people didn't assume I was godless because I believe in evolution. Seriously! What the yotz is wrong with the idea that God used evolution as a tool the way we might use a hammer!?!? The idea that it has to be completely one or the other makes me absolutely crazy. Why can't the whole molding Adam and Eve out of clay thing be a metaphor, just once?

Um... yeah... kind of a touchy subject with me... I really, really hate it when people assume they know what I believe in.

Anyway, the point of what I was saying in my previous post wasn't that merfolk would have evolved at all. They're fantasy creatures that don't actually exist, so it's completely up to the writer who includes them in a story to come up with how they came about. Arguing as if they were real would be silly. The point I was making was that fish aren't the only creatures that live in the sea and are adapted to sea life.

The pictures above are actually pretty common, conceptually. I see that sort of thing all the time. I have yet to see a picture of merfolk based on a marine-mammal concept.

Berz.

Details in thread on existence.

Logical fallacies are not the scientific standard. Induction is. We know they don't exist because of the mountain of evidence that they don't, being that no one has ever actually seen one or seen any evidence of one.

You cannot ever in any way prove that something doesn't exist using logic. That's why science abandoned it long ago.

Berz.

Desire implies that it is living and aware. If it is living, it must ultimately die. If something dies, it leaves behind a body. No bodies have been found.

I call that evidence.

Berz.

Not 100%, but pretty darned close to it. But the areas that we haven't reached yet are typically those places where such creatures couldn't live anyway. the stuff in the really deep, dark portions of the sea are typically pretty "out-there" in terms of their biology; things like bio-luminescence, high-pressure adapted bodies, blindness because with no light who needs eyes anyway... that sort of thing. I would surmise that any creatures that would live in the portions of the sea that are as yet unexplored would be completely unlike merfolk to the extent that they wouldn't even be recognizable as anything even closely related to the creatures of myth.

Berz.