Feejee Mermaid on display in Colorado may shock and intrigue—but no longer considered a 'missing link'

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Mermaids have inhabited world folklore and mythology for centuries. Ancient Babylonians worshiped Oannes, a human-fish hybrid; sirens populated Greek mythology; and fairy tales such as "The Little Mermaid" have made this figure a pop culture icon.

During the 1800s, American showman P.T. Barnum brought the Feejee Mermaid to the American public. Presented at the American Museum, run by Barnum in Manhattan from 1841 to 1865, as "The Greatest Curiosity in the World" and said to have originated in the "Feejee Islands," the creature inspired debates about science and evolution.

Some people believed it was a missing link in the evolutionary chain between aquatic and terrestrial life. I recently viewed a Feejee Mermaid replica on display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science as part of the "Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns and Mermaids" temporary exhibit. As a folklorist, I'm intrigued by how this mermaid subverted Americans' expectations that mermaids are alluring and how it sparked an interplay between science and myth.

A Feejee Mermaid is a type of traditional art form that originated in Japan and the East Indies more than 400 years ago. It came to Americans in 1842, when Barnum claimed to display a "specimen" at the American Museum in New York City. In the Japanese version, the lower half was a fish attached to an upper half of a monkey or made of papier-mâché.

Barnum's was a mixture of a monkey and a fish, but the replica on display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has a papier-mâché upper half. Feejee Mermaids were often preserved by being coated in clay. Mammalian-fish hybrid creatures have a role in Japanese folklore through the ningyo, which is a mermaidlike yokai, a supernatural being thought to have the power to either curse or grant eternal life.

Unlike Western mermaids, ningyo were grotesque. The Feejee Mermaid that became part of Barnum's exhibition was created by a Japanese fisherman in the early 19th century. He claimed to have caught the specimen and said it prophesied a sterility epidemic.