US Government Denies Existence of Mermaids

Submitted by Foreign Students on Wed 04/07/12

Mermaids are up there with unicorns and dragons as some of the best known mythical creatures, yet a US government agency recently felt the need to officially deny their existence. This rather unusual step was taken after a fictional TV programme was mistaken by some viewers as factual.

It all started when the Discovery Channel aired ‘Mermaids: The Body Found' in May. As the press release detailed, the tongue-in-cheek programme painted "a wildly convincing picture of the existence of mermaids, what they may look like and why they've stayed hidden...until now".

However, some easily fooled viewers took the show as a factually accurate documentary and wrote to the National Ocean Service asking about the creatures. This led the agency to post an article on its educational website last week entitled: "No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found".

On following the story up, the BBC managed to get a quite brilliant quote from National Ocean Service spokeswoman Carol Kavanagh, who clarified "we don't have a mermaid science programme".

The whole story is pretty odd- how can anyone believe in mermaids, everyone knows the Loch Ness Monster ate them all...