mermaidkincore - Tumblr blog

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Merfolk are obviously mammalian - the presence of breasts on mermaids and the horizontal tail fin are dead giveaways - but classifying them more precisely than that gets interesting.

They're fully aquatic, which rules out the various lineages of semi-aquatic mammals

Their high intelligence and complex social behavior (mermaids are clearly sapient) is similar to cetaceans

Their forelimbs still have distinct fingers rather than being fins - most similar to the flippers possessed by pinnipeds

So does them retaining some amount to body hair

Unlike pinnipeds, they do not possess external hindlimbs, and their tail flukes resemble those of cetaceans and sirenians

Their human-like faces display none of the characteristic skull adaptations associated with sirenians

None of those three groups have particularly long external arms

This points to merfolk being their own lineage of fully aquatic mammals. The flat face with forward-facing eyes, as well as the grasping hands with opposable thumbs and the fact that they did retain external forelimbs seems to point to them being primates, and we can go one step further and say that their facial structure is characteristic of simians - basically, merfolk are probably not lemurs. Them having tails also certainly rules out apes. New World monkeys have longer tails that evolved to be prehensile on multiple separate occasions, while Old World monkeys have shorter tails and never evolved to be prehensile, and I'm going off of intuition here but it seems to me that the tails of merfolk are more similar to the former than to the latter.

So, if I'm right, that would classify mermaids as a lineage of New World monkeys. Merfolk occupy a variety of ocean biomes but are very often seen in coral reefs, which also explains them retaining their arms and hands - I can see how those would be useful adaptations in a coral reef environment - so I would say they probably evolved in coral reefs. Most coral reefs in the Americas are located in the Caribbean, so that's the most likely place for proto-merfolk to have evolved

From there, merfolk could probably have spread down the South American coast, which still has some coral reefs, at which point some populations could have made their way up the Amazon River, while a smaller group could have crossed the Atlantic to West Africa and the coral reefs there. From there, merfolk could have spread around Africa's coasts (as well as up West Africa's various rivers), reached the Indian Ocean where they'd probably have been very successful, and then finally made it to Indonesia and then Polynesia where the abundance of coral reefs would have been great for merfolk.

This would probably mean that the Caribbean, and to a lesser degree coastal South America and the Amazon rainforest, would have the greatest genetic variety of merfolk, while Indonesia and Polynesia would have the most weird physical traits on merfolk

[mermaidkincore]

[mermaidkincore]

Yay!

*check her calendar *…Except this year, it falls on Good Friday. Oops 😅. So what to do, except wearing murmaid (goth version of syrenka fashion), and having a mermaid tea with vegetal sausages, and without fishes shaped chocolates? 😢

[mermaidkincore]

Mermaid Vibes🧜🏼‍♀️

[mermaidkincore]

Mermaid vibes🧜🏼‍♀️

[mermaidkincore]

Mermaid Vibes🧜🏼‍♀️

[mermaidkincore]

[mermaidkincore]

[mermaidkincore]

[mermaidkincore]

Mermaid Vibes🧜🏼‍♀️

[mermaidkincore]

Mermaid Vibes🧜🏼‍♀️

[mermaidkincore]

Mermaid Vibes🧜🏼‍♀️

[mermaidkincore]

Mermaid vibes🧜🏼‍♀️

[mermaidkincore]

Mermaid vibes🧜🏼‍♀️

[mermaidkincore]

Something interesting happens when I'm swimming in my mermaid tail. The strangers who talk to me change. When I'm just swimming with my mono-fin, I get a lot of questions from other swimmers about it and what I'm doing. They seem to see it as another tool in their work out arsenal and are interested in learning about it.

But then I put the tail on over that same mono-fin, and it gets quiet. I've created some kind of distance, either because it feels more like a performance, because they think I'm really weird, or some other, secret third thing. And then the only people who talk to me are the ones who know me already, the kids, and the elderly.

One older gentleman never talks to anyone. Stays on the far end of the pool and doesn't use the locker rooms. But a few times now he's said something to me like "Well I got the lane all warmed up for you," and that he thinks my mono-fin is "pretty neat."

Another older woman said, "Well it's not everyday you get to swim next to a mermaid,” and another excitedly said, "I got to see you swim today!” It's magic seeing how people respond.

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mermaid oufit

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