I remember watching this and the dragon one as a kid. I personally really like the idea of a series that tries to explain how a mythical creature could have lived within reality, but its such a shame these didnt want to tell you it was fake. Also they shouldnt have been on science channels. It just needed 1 disclaimer they show after every ad break
Same! They were a big part of my childhood that really interested me in documentaries in general- it was almost like a transition into more serious topics. The dragon one had me arguing with other kids and defending it tho lmao
Yeah i already loved dragons when i saw that one for the first time xD so seeing that had my mind hooked. A part of me knew it was fake but a big part also wanted it to be real for sure haha
@Eliza Stevenson Lmao I just went with it. Had that mindset even when I created this YT account, which is my most recent one (granted I'm still young). My reasoning was: "If they aren't real, then why can we think of it? How can multiple people think of the same creature?" Oh boy, what the world would be if that were true 🤦♂️
Good ol' cable television. "Animal" planet makes shows about animals that aren't real pretending they are, and the "History" channel makes shows about aliens being a part of every aspect of human history. They might as well air the Transformers movies and say "woah look at these weird metal creatures! Did you know the Hoover Dam was built to conceal their secrets?!" :D
I remember adoring the dragon documentary as a teen, I think they made it more clear it was all fake, and then being extremely disappointed in the mermaid one because of how hard they pushed it being real and how badly it was done in comparison
Yes the dragon one was fun! They made basically "Frankenstein-ed" a hypothetical dragon using different dinosuar characteristics. This mermaid one is a disgrace, glorified science drama.
I remember watching "The Body Found" and it's sequal "The New Evidence" as a child with my best friend. We were completwly convincwd mermaids were real and that they even existed in the archipelago we lived next to. We spent many days running around trying to find evidence, writing in notebooks and getting absolutely nowhere. Thanks for reminding me!
Mermaids are real and just like every creature taught not to be real. GOVERNMENT WANTS us to be in a slave minded box,where nothing phenomenal exists ,only what theu say exists is what exists and nothing else,not evem aliens. All of this exists amd so doea life else where. Every human and creatures will always look accorsing to how it has to adapt to its environment. One day the worl will knoq the whe truth and nothing but the truth. Money governs people and many are being paid to lie about the truth. If its not true why fuss about it,why? Because it is truth
I remember eating up this mockumentary as a dumb, naive teen for a lot of the reasons you mentioned in the vid. I remember running to my parents telling them mermaids are real, and they just laughed at me 😂. When I found out it was fake, it was a real learning moment for me to know how susceptible I was to misinformation.
I watched this as a kid and thoroughly enjoyed it, but even then I knew it was fake. Its a shame though, they couldve made a really good, informational mermaid documentary, where they discuss mermaids in culture and what animals were likely mistaken for mermaids and such
Even as a kid, I knew this wasn’t real. I believe they said something about small webbing between human fingers, but I was like “this is just skin and flesh to help my fingers stretch not webbing!” I was still in 5th grade when I made this observation. A few of my classmates believed the tv shows claims but most of us didn’t because we all agreed that there were too many things in it that didn’t make sense. We were all in 5th grade and we knew this movie was fake. That being said, as a kid I found it very fun to watch. My teacher, seeing an opportunity to teach us, made every Friday for a month mermaid day. We would all watch part of it in class and then my teacher would have us do more research then debate. The class was divided into two teams that would debate the existence of mermaids. Just to give us an added challenge we would switch sides every week so we could learn how to argue for something we didn’t agree with. We didn’t have any good arguments for or against the existence of mermaids each week (because we were in fifth grade) but it was still a good learning experience.
This wasn't the first time that Animal Planet made a fictional series that portrays itself as "reality". The show "The Lost Tapes" would explain about cryptids and other fictional creatures while sprinkling in footage of people's encounter with said cryptids. Of course none of the stuff shown is real, and given that it airs late at night, it's more of a cheesy entertainment show than something legitimate. As for the Mermaid show itself: Yeah this government conspiracy coverup stuff ain't that great or smart once you think about it. It would've been neat if this special instead took a more "speculative biology" approach, without the spoooky footage or coverups. The documentary "Dragons, A fantasy made real", also made by Charley Foley, never tried to present itself as fact. It focused more on how dragons COULD have existed and thrived (and went extinct), no government coverup here.
It blows me away that people are surprised that humans all over the world one day thought to themselves "Huh. Wouldn't it be cool if there were water people?" The fact that many cultures have "mermaids" means nothing. Now, if a bunch of cultures all had a myth where there was "Gand'Arion the yellow, black, and neon purple fish-man who always carried a bright red spear" I'd start to think there was something there.
this, plus when you really check you found that no, there is no mermaid "all over the world" only some cultural group of peoples who communicate have mermaid. It was like an ancient pre-internet meme.
I watched this documentary on TV as a young child in a hotel room in the middle of the night and it scared me shitless. They played "The Body Found" and "The New Evidence" back to back and I was convinced Mermaids were real and horrifying for years. I was scared to go in water in case a mermaid got me lmao
My mom's boyfriend who believes in all the conspiracy theories about aliens and stuff actually believed this and thinks mermaids are real to this day...
I first saw this when I was twelve (both this version and an alternate cut with different music and a different opening scene) and I don’t remember thinking it was real but it was really convincing and I loved the speculative biology of how the mermaids would have evolved. I fell in love with the strings song during the shark attack scene and I learned it was the Kronos Quartet cover of “Flugufrelsarinn” by an Icelandic rock band called Sigur Rós, and that definitely changed my life forever so that’s a big part of why I look back on this film so fondly. But also I love mermaids and cryptid stuff in general anyway, and in the years before this movie I loved watching that other famous Animal Planet mockumentary (series) “Lost Tapes”.
OAS: Today we're doing Skull Identification speedrun. Pick up the tag, species name is covered up. Let's look at the Skull, I think it's a fish. We can see lots of bones and lots of teeth but not enough to be a fish. Now let's look at the lower jaw. See how it's made of one strong bone? That's a trait of Mammals........
This _Faux_ documentary is honestly a *mixed bag* for me; on one hand, shows like this _do_ interest me because I've always had a fascination with mythology and mythical creatures, and I'm interested in shows like this that take the time to creatively (and feasibly) speculate HOW creatures like mermaids and dragons MIGHT be like (and how they would've evolved) *if they were real-life beings. Yet, this show *did* strip away the trust of a lot of its viewers by pretty much doing away with *one* thing that I feel _could've_ possibly led to a *bit* less of a harsher backlash: *_DISCLAIMERS,_* and plenty of them.
I remember watching a episode of lost tapes about zombies. Little me, really thought it was real, because of the re-enactment footage. I wasn't able sleep that night. Freaking worried that the remaining zombies that disappeared would start a pandemic.
My 6th grade science teacher played this for our class under the pretense that it was a LEGITIMATE DOCUMENTARY To say that again, my sixth grade teacher, a 50 some year old lady with a degree, thought that mermaids WERE REAL
I think some guys wanted to make so nich little speculative - evolution doc but because they made it in a Mockumentary style it backfired with impressionable people. The guy running AP said after the third one... "We're never doing anything like that again. Cuz people take us serious and this is active undoing what AP stands for " (Paraphrasing ofc)
They did a similar show after but instead they often killed off the cast so you got the jist it wasn't real. Unfortunately that show was more horrifying than Mermaids and gave me many more nightmares. The Chupacabra episode is still somewhere in my nightmares.
To be fair, I think Animal Planet was attempting to recreate the success they had with a similar documentary "Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real" where they pick a mythological creature and forge a speculative story that explains how such creatures could exist. Unfortunately, Mermaids: The Body Found didn't make it very obvious that it was completely speculative. I enjoy both the documentaries and I would've enjoyed other mythological creatures getting a shot at a similar documentary. At the very least, Mermaids: The Body Found is fun to watch for entertainment purposes and it draws attention to something I don't think a lot of scientific media draws inspiration from anymore, speculative evolution. It'd be nice to see speculative evolution come back as a medium in scientific media because I, and I'm sure many others, have fond memories of documentaries like "Alien Planet", "The Future is Wild" and of course "Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real".
I couldn't believe that they did this. I knew from day one that it was a movie. A fictional movie that I did enjoy. Just like the other documentaries like the dragon one they did where they found a frozen body to study on. I knew it was fake on that too. To me fiction like this is like the 90's TV show wish bone. A dog can't talk or tell stories, yet I enjoyed the escape from reality for a bit, and I would move on. Then I became concerned when a family member had to do a report on megalodon and they used the documentary on TV.
Does anyone remember that documentary that tried to prove the existence of fire breathing dragons? There was like a carcass in ice and stuff and there was like this whole explanation of how they could breathe fire and as a kid I was blown away 😂
Yessss! I loved The Last Dragon as a kid, poor six year old was devastated to find out it was fake. Although I will say all of these old "documentaries" that came about in the wake of The Blair Witch Project are certainly entertaining despite how they're presented
I remember when this came out. I got stoned and watched it. It took me longer than usual to recognize it was complete nonesense. I was ticked off and thought "first the history channel and now this. Whats the world coming to?" How animal planet didnt get sued for misleading people (lets be honest, they lied) is beyond me. It also harshed my mellow.
Ya know, it fooled me as a kid but as an adult I can tell it's a very clear mock-umentary. It's a whole genre, it's supposed to be fake and probably to spook kids
And yet a bunch of adults believed it when it came out, I'd say there's sort of a transition between the dragon mockumentary, that was marketed and the tagline was basically "what if the fiction was real", that one had a mix of speculative evolution and mockumentary, then this one came out and was more deceiving and then the Meg one, that one was straight up malicious, to this day it's the main source of meg conspiracies (same with the mermaid one but the meg one is inherently more believe because it's just "a bigger shark" rather than mermaids)
Hey Charlie!! Remember Me? I was scrolling on shorts and found a video and was like, hey is that Charlie!? I am so happy i found this channel and to see you posting. I remember the livestreams during covid those were pretty fun. We were actually watching the one where we found a poisons caterpillar 🐛 and you showed it.
I can't believe I have never heard of this, or should I say THESE, thank you for bringing this to my attention and delivering a good message about these kind of shows, it is truly a shame that something like this could be aired on the same Animal Planet that I loved watching as a kid for it's factual information about the animal kingdom.
As entertaining as I remember this cast of absurd "documentaries" being, it is such a shame that they went so far to deceive people. Heck, if played from a different angle it could've been a fantastic way to introduce the public to speculative biology/evolution projects, and how they can not only be fun thought experiments but highlight actual scientific theories on how animals evolve.
Man, the "aquatic ape theory" being in "Mermaids: the body found" is the documentary equivalent to Pacific Rim, a movie made in *2015* , mentioning that "dinosaurs have 2 brains"
I remember watching this documentary as a kid and eating it up. It was so fascinating to me and it was years later when I found out it was fake. I don't think they should have misled their audience, but it still did a really good job at entertaining people. Especially kids who were into cryptids like I was.
I was in middle school when this came out, and I completely believed it (mind you graphics in most video games and CGI in most movies was still pretty bad). The documentary seemed believable because I thought they were actual scientists and I recall reading about “The Bloop” in a textbook. This channel also never had done something like this before. They had a lot of educational content back in the day. I lost all respect for animal planet two months later when I found out it was complete bogus. I never watched that channel again after that.
My daughter watched this at her friends' house and they were crushed later to discover it was all fake. Pretty harsh way to introduce kids to the reality that the world will throw anyone under the bus for profit.
@@personagenerator yeah, Im just asking or debunking about bbc docs since most of those scenes were cut and pasted clips together and are mostly in zoo and the anthropomorphizing of animals and as for natgeo, they sometimes lied 6:32
There are mermaid like people I saw a documentary about them I think they are from southeast Asia and they don't have flippers or anything but they do have naturally better ability to hold their breath underwater. They mostly are a fishing society and many are divers that can hold their breath for much longer than the average person. The more interesting thing is they studied non diving members of this community and even they had the same mutation that allowed for more efficient diving and breath holding
I love mermaids and I grew up loving mermaids but when I saw that documentary I thought it was fake and lame. The best documentary done about mermaids was a really old one that I saw when I was maybe 10 or 11. It talked about folklore, how mythical mermaids came to be, and all the mystery about them. Animal Planet however, made a fool of themselves. And as you have stated in the video, they gave false information making people discredit science and that's just sad and ridiculous!
Oh my goodness! You are on nature boom time! I thought I recognized you. I have been watching your channel for a while, and I loved nature boom time when I was younger. I can't believe it!
Ok I know you’re talking about one of the animal planet documentaries but what about the future is wild like what kind of skeletons do each future creature have
Thanks. That’s 13-ish years I’ll never get back. I held onto bits of both of those documentaries and swore something is out there. Well, maybe there still is but it isn’t this. I’m sad now
I remember watching this and sharing to my friends when I was 11 years old. AND with confidence saying “It’s animal planet! A science channel about being educational! So it must be true” 🤦🏽♀️ I’m 24 now and I’m so embarrassed about being that gullible as a kid
To debunk this even further, no one said these bones were the same species. The tail fin was probably from a manatee, the hand from a dolphin, and there are more marine mammals than just mermaids, which are indeed not real. Most sightings of mermaids have come from manatees, as some of the first people to see them described them as ugly. Cmon man give the underwater jellybean a break :'(
I remember my science teacher made us watch this documentary as homework, and to make an essay about it. I've always loved animals and cryptozoology, so I was the only one who wrote that the documentary didn't make sense and was fake. I failed science that year 😂😂😂.
i remember watching this documentary when i was like 11-12 and i believed every word they said.. FOR YEARS. i mean i appreciate the idea that tries to explain evolution that could have happened (but obvs didn't) but doing so without a disclaimer and presenting it as real is just so damaging and harmful.
I remember watching this one, it and alot of the decisions it made disenfranchised me with Discovery and Animal Planet, BUT, I do admit it is a fun little thought experiment and a look into speculative evolution
I genuinely believe that if this documentary was presented as a work of fiction instead of them trying to convince people that it was real, not as many people would've had as big of a problem with it. The same goes for the Megalodon documentary as well.
I TOTALLY AGREE..... it was a dissapointment and a new low and just wrong, pointless and unworthy of A channel that calls its self documentary or science based
They did not claim it to be a documentary - they called it a mockumentary - as I understand it, they were not trying to hoax people - simply get their attention on the damage caused by missile testing.
Gone are the days of Science Channel/TLC-The Learning Channel/Discovery/History Channel/Animal Planet and actually having real accurate scientific programming. RIP.
I remember watching this. My family was really excited, since it had been advertised for weeks. At the very end of the program, I saw the disclaimer it was fake. I was so angry, I not only stopped watching Animal Planet, I never paid for cable TV after that.
The History Channel had released Ancient Aliens the year prior, so there was no reason for me to have cable TV after that. I also ended my Netflix account after another fake documentary. The artist Damien Hirst made one to advertise his new gallery pieces. I didn't realize it was fake until I noticed one of the works looked like a girl in a popular music group. 🤦🏻♀️
I used to watch animal planet religiously as a kid, particularly river monsters and big cat diary. I was so obsessed with these shows and for the most part they tended to be factual, and i was 9 when this mockentary came out and had already found out the tooth fairy wasnt real so i knew mermaids weren’t real and all that but when i saw this on Animal Planet i was so convinced that wow maybe they really are real, maybe theyre not beautiful half woman half fish creatures but more realistic intelligent ape like animals and i was so excited and truly believed in mermaids till i was like 11-12 bc of this😭
i saw the advertisements for this when it first aired. i was very intrigued. the marketing, I thought was phenomenal. i remember seeing a website they encouraged you to go to at the end of every commercial for the film. So, I went on. To my surprise, all that was there was a notice that the site had been shut down by the DOJ. Really intriguing stuff. I don't give a shit about how it actually played out, I bought into the hype and it was masterful
The Future is Wild, Dragons: a Fantasy Made Real, and even that one with the werewolves were far better at the docufiction route than this and the megalodon crap.
I felt the same. Betrayed and disappointed. Now I don't really ever watch documentaries because I constantly question their evidence and it takes the fun out of it. I'm in it for the facts and reality of how interesting life can be, not for manufactured stories to prove fairy tales for entertainment.
I agree with your review except the part about "should never have been made" because it is "thoroughly entertaining"!!! And if something is clearly just meant for entertainment and succeeds at that, then that's a win. A lot like Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real
Thanks for making this video as I just watch - animal planet - mermaid the documentary. I had always thought Animal planet made only factual stories and this program literally turned me off their series. Maybe just me now their programs gives the vibes of fake news i.e trashy gossip magazine news. Really sad Animal planet are going down this path.
I keep an open mind about these new discoveries, as a young lad we should do a lot of fishing and deep sea fishing here in the ocean. During the sardine run in the 1997, when the sardines washed out near the coast of Durban, we where in the boat trying to net them and my friends and I saw the most weirdest thing in the ocean. It looked like the same thing the documentary aired.
I am not an animal planet documentaries person and I just watched this today on prime video. Maybe the documentary is fake but what my friends and I witnessed was real in the coast of Durban KZN in 1997.
Hey...I beileve in the Megalodon....😅 I think they're WAY smaller due to inbreeding and possibly mingling their bloodine with their closest cousin, great whites. And I beileve there isn't many of them still around. So no, i dont think we have a giant 60ft shark swimking around...more like 25-30ft, maybe 40ft, and if they managed to survive the ice age maybe they evolved to handle colder less oxygenated waters, so they can only be found in the deep artic sea (with sperm whales, other large whales, and colossal squid, and which would be their food source) Would also explain why we haven't found or seen them because most of our artic waters still need to be explored....not to mention we've seen crazier sea creatures that are hard to beileve exist due to crazy environments like deep sea gigantism! I just have a hard time letting go of the Meg because our youngest Megalodon tooth was dated as only being 10,000 years old...which means at one point we humans possibly shared the ocean with this awesome (and terrifying) predator! And we keep finding more and more sea creatures that we find out aren't extinct, like we thought, every year! Some of them we thought had died out millions of years ago but nope surprise! They're still around! So why is the Meg and different? Because 10k years is just to close for me to consider the Meg dead and gone. Yeah I know I'm crazy. As for Animal Planet (o and the discovery channel did this dumb shit too btw) I hated their FAKE documentaries! They really disappointed me and made me so angry! They could have used real science and made something interesting but no...they went this stupid and unscientific route. Mermaids ain't real, the Earth is a roundish lumpy potato, and as for the Megalodon...We all have our conspiracy theory hills to die on and the Meg is mine. 😅😂 (Even though I know scientifically that the chances of Meg still swimming in our ocean is slim to none. But it's chances live on in my crazy brain and heart)
Honestly, I'll never understand how so many people thought this mockumentary and the megalodon one were real or how they can accuse Discovery of lying. Even as a fairly young child, I knew both were fake and completely understood the concept of what they were doing even without seeing any disclaimers. I mean, it was so obviously fake? Idk. X.x
What I hated about these were that I knew they were fake, I thought it was obvious, even as a kid, but my parents thought they were real and would argue that to me.
on a channel that covers real nature topics i could definitely see how a kid would think it’s real, especially if they like mermaids or whatever. hell, just look around in the comments and you’ll see people who believed it.
It was not obvious for many people unfortunately. I work as a museum guide, and last year I worked in a sea-themed museum. The CRAZY AMOUNT of people that asked me stuff about the Megalodon and were convinced it was still alive (some citing that specific documentary) is unreal. I feel like a disclaimer would have been useful, even just because I could have pointed that out and explained that it was fake without a doubt. No mermaids though luckily ahaha
I like the idea of trying to argue if these creatures are real and showing theories and folklore to try to further discover or debunk the myth. But using fake scientists is fkd up
I saw this one when I was a kid. I was confused because it felt so fake, but it was aired on Animal Planet. Their reputation made we want to think it was real. They should have been clear with their audience that it was just fantasy.
I think it could have been a very cool mockumentory, if they would have portrayed it that way. Like if they had said it was fake, it could have been interesting. Imagining how mermaids might have interacted with other aquatic creatures, and then going in and explaining “so here’s the actual evidence of “mermaids” here’s what people have mistaken, here’s the culture explanations from different areas, etc”
I was really young when this came out and 100% believed it until I went running to my mom to show it to her. She looked at five seconds of footage, said “that is is fake as hell why do you watch garbage like that? Read a book.” Thank you mom.
I haven't watched anything from the science channel since their fake documentaries aired. Such a violation of trust and respect. You're spot on, but that's why I watch your show now.
I just assumed this was intended as a mockumentary? Of course it’s not real, but it’s far from the first time mockumentaries have been made to speculate, commentate and entertain rather than presenting the truth. I studied them in school as a genre of fiction back in the early 2000s.
I remember believing in mermaids when I was ten because of this, watched it with my dad, those were the best years of my life, I believed in magic, and it has inspired my art as well as my fantasy writing since.
It’s a shame you didn’t watch it when you were a kid, you would have loved it, watching it as an adult is completely different, an analytical approach is inevitable.
I remember watching this and the dragon one as a kid. I personally really like the idea of a series that tries to explain how a mythical creature could have lived within reality, but its such a shame these didnt want to tell you it was fake. Also they shouldnt have been on science channels.
It just needed 1 disclaimer they show after every ad break
Same! They were a big part of my childhood that really interested me in documentaries in general- it was almost like a transition into more serious topics.
The dragon one had me arguing with other kids and defending it tho lmao
The dragon documentary really got me. I was obsessed with those things and explaining that film made me look psychotic
Yeah i already loved dragons when i saw that one for the first time xD so seeing that had my mind hooked. A part of me knew it was fake but a big part also wanted it to be real for sure haha
@Eliza Stevenson Lmao I just went with it. Had that mindset even when I created this YT account, which is my most recent one (granted I'm still young). My reasoning was: "If they aren't real, then why can we think of it? How can multiple people think of the same creature?" Oh boy, what the world would be if that were true 🤦♂️
Oh I LOVED the dragon one! it shaped how I use dragons in writing. I agree, I wish it was more obviously "This is fun speculation"
Fun fact: River Monsters ended because Jeremy had caught and released all of the lake monsters and they ran out of places to go.
Yup!
Which is sad
Man, I didn't know that !!! Quick imma go on a marathon of river monsters now 🙃
That’s pretty cool
Bro became the king of the river monsters
Good ol' cable television. "Animal" planet makes shows about animals that aren't real pretending they are, and the "History" channel makes shows about aliens being a part of every aspect of human history. They might as well air the Transformers movies and say "woah look at these weird metal creatures! Did you know the Hoover Dam was built to conceal their secrets?!" :D
Wait, there's Autobots in the Hoover dam?!
Yep. The aliens are a big part of why I so rarely watch the History channel anymore.
I blame the writer's strike of 2007, that's when reality TV first got prominence.
And don't forget that good old Learning Channel TLC! I learned so much from Toddlers and Tiaras 😑
A transformers mockumentary would be cool tho. Let it tell a version of the G1 series and such.
As long as it states in the beginning that it’s fake.
I think it's a shame Animal planet thought documentaries like that was good for their channel. Thanks for this video.
hey nina i agree with you, i grew up watching animal planet it realy is a shame they did this. were you from?
@@lo0ksik dont think youtube comments are the place for small talk
I feel sorry for your childhood, watching this as a kid was one of my favourite memories
@@commemorativehe's desperate
I remember adoring the dragon documentary as a teen, I think they made it more clear it was all fake, and then being extremely disappointed in the mermaid one because of how hard they pushed it being real and how badly it was done in comparison
We had the box set. The dragon one was dope.
Yes the dragon one was fun! They made basically "Frankenstein-ed" a hypothetical dragon using different dinosuar characteristics. This mermaid one is a disgrace, glorified science drama.
I remember watching "The Body Found" and it's sequal "The New Evidence" as a child with my best friend. We were completwly convincwd mermaids were real and that they even existed in the archipelago we lived next to. We spent many days running around trying to find evidence, writing in notebooks and getting absolutely nowhere. Thanks for reminding me!
>2012
>"as a kid"
goddamn I'm old
Must have been some amazing memories!
Mermaids are real and just like every creature taught not to be real. GOVERNMENT WANTS us to be in a slave minded box,where nothing phenomenal exists ,only what theu say exists is what exists and nothing else,not evem aliens. All of this exists amd so doea life else where. Every human and creatures will always look accorsing to how it has to adapt to its environment. One day the worl will knoq the whe truth and nothing but the truth. Money governs people and many are being paid to lie about the truth. If its not true why fuss about it,why? Because it is truth
you made really cool memories tho!, being naive is part of being a kid sometimes hahahaha
I remember eating up this mockumentary as a dumb, naive teen for a lot of the reasons you mentioned in the vid. I remember running to my parents telling them mermaids are real, and they just laughed at me 😂. When I found out it was fake, it was a real learning moment for me to know how susceptible I was to misinformation.
And meanwhile the people who never learned that lesson are trying to take over the government and already run several states
I watched this as a kid and thoroughly enjoyed it, but even then I knew it was fake. Its a shame though, they couldve made a really good, informational mermaid documentary, where they discuss mermaids in culture and what animals were likely mistaken for mermaids and such
Even as a kid, I knew this wasn’t real. I believe they said something about small webbing between human fingers, but I was like “this is just skin and flesh to help my fingers stretch not webbing!” I was still in 5th grade when I made this observation. A few of my classmates believed the tv shows claims but most of us didn’t because we all agreed that there were too many things in it that didn’t make sense. We were all in 5th grade and we knew this movie was fake.
That being said, as a kid I found it very fun to watch. My teacher, seeing an opportunity to teach us, made every Friday for a month mermaid day. We would all watch part of it in class and then my teacher would have us do more research then debate.
The class was divided into two teams that would debate the existence of mermaids. Just to give us an added challenge we would switch sides every week so we could learn how to argue for something we didn’t agree with. We didn’t have any good arguments for or against the existence of mermaids each week (because we were in fifth grade) but it was still a good learning experience.
This wasn't the first time that Animal Planet made a fictional series that portrays itself as "reality". The show "The Lost Tapes" would explain about cryptids and other fictional creatures while sprinkling in footage of people's encounter with said cryptids.
Of course none of the stuff shown is real, and given that it airs late at night, it's more of a cheesy entertainment show than something legitimate.
As for the Mermaid show itself: Yeah this government conspiracy coverup stuff ain't that great or smart once you think about it. It would've been neat if this special instead took a more "speculative biology" approach, without the spoooky footage or coverups.
The documentary "Dragons, A fantasy made real", also made by Charley Foley, never tried to present itself as fact. It focused more on how dragons COULD have existed and thrived (and went extinct), no government coverup here.
And for all the truly gullible people, NOAA releasing a statement just proved the cover up was real
It blows me away that people are surprised that humans all over the world one day thought to themselves "Huh. Wouldn't it be cool if there were water people?"
The fact that many cultures have "mermaids" means nothing. Now, if a bunch of cultures all had a myth where there was "Gand'Arion the yellow, black, and neon purple fish-man who always carried a bright red spear" I'd start to think there was something there.
this, plus when you really check you found that no, there is no mermaid "all over the world" only some cultural group of peoples who communicate have mermaid. It was like an ancient pre-internet meme.
I watched this documentary on TV as a young child in a hotel room in the middle of the night and it scared me shitless. They played "The Body Found" and "The New Evidence" back to back and I was convinced Mermaids were real and horrifying for years. I was scared to go in water in case a mermaid got me lmao
😂😂
Same
Respect to the camera man who went back in time to record the aquatic apes 💀
My mom's boyfriend who believes in all the conspiracy theories about aliens and stuff actually believed this and thinks mermaids are real to this day...
We’ve only discovered 5% of the ocean who knows what else is living out there
@@andrewgivens3217 I'll give you his number so you guys can go Squatch hunting together...
Heard about miami hall aliens?
I first saw this when I was twelve (both this version and an alternate cut with different music and a different opening scene) and I don’t remember thinking it was real but it was really convincing and I loved the speculative biology of how the mermaids would have evolved. I fell in love with the strings song during the shark attack scene and I learned it was the Kronos Quartet cover of “Flugufrelsarinn” by an Icelandic rock band called Sigur Rós, and that definitely changed my life forever so that’s a big part of why I look back on this film so fondly. But also I love mermaids and cryptid stuff in general anyway, and in the years before this movie I loved watching that other famous Animal Planet mockumentary (series) “Lost Tapes”.
OAS: Today we're doing Skull Identification speedrun. Pick up the tag, species name is covered up. Let's look at the Skull, I think it's a fish. We can see lots of bones and lots of teeth but not enough to be a fish. Now let's look at the lower jaw. See how it's made of one strong bone? That's a trait of Mammals........
This _Faux_ documentary is honestly a *mixed bag* for me; on one hand, shows like this _do_ interest me because I've always had a fascination with mythology and mythical creatures, and I'm interested in shows like this that take the time to creatively (and feasibly) speculate HOW creatures like mermaids and dragons MIGHT be like (and how they would've evolved) *if they were real-life beings. Yet, this show *did* strip away the trust of a lot of its viewers by pretty much doing away with *one* thing that I feel _could've_ possibly led to a *bit* less of a harsher backlash: *_DISCLAIMERS,_* and plenty of them.
Yeah, it should take a note from the War of the worlds mockumentary. Where it’s obviously fake and had disclaimers and such.
@@jacksonhopp2003 I’m familiar with that one.
*_I remeber when no one believed in UFOs or Aliens, and yet here we are 😂_*
Exactly yet believing in mermaids is seen as crazy I think it's possible humans could've evolved to live in water look at the marine iguanas
I remember watching a episode of lost tapes about zombies. Little me, really thought it was real, because of the re-enactment footage. I wasn't able sleep that night. Freaking worried that the remaining zombies that disappeared would start a pandemic.
This is hilarious.
I enjoy watching people watch “A Thoroughly Entertaining Pile of Garbage That Should Never Have Been Made”.
The Animal Planet writers admitted that they should've made it a series instead of a documentary. (They also should have done more research).
My 6th grade science teacher played this for our class under the pretense that it was a LEGITIMATE DOCUMENTARY
To say that again, my sixth grade teacher, a 50 some year old lady with a degree, thought that mermaids WERE REAL
I think some guys wanted to make so nich little speculative - evolution doc but because they made it in a Mockumentary style it backfired with impressionable people.
The guy running AP said after the third one... "We're never doing anything like that again. Cuz people take us serious and this is active undoing what AP stands for "
(Paraphrasing ofc)
They did a similar show after but instead they often killed off the cast so you got the jist it wasn't real. Unfortunately that show was more horrifying than Mermaids and gave me many more nightmares. The Chupacabra episode is still somewhere in my nightmares.
@@jamie1602what's the show called?
@@mackerelle9789Lost Tapes. Though I think Lost Tapes actually started before this mockumentary came out.
To be fair, I think Animal Planet was attempting to recreate the success they had with a similar documentary "Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real" where they pick a mythological creature and forge a speculative story that explains how such creatures could exist. Unfortunately, Mermaids: The Body Found didn't make it very obvious that it was completely speculative. I enjoy both the documentaries and I would've enjoyed other mythological creatures getting a shot at a similar documentary. At the very least, Mermaids: The Body Found is fun to watch for entertainment purposes and it draws attention to something I don't think a lot of scientific media draws inspiration from anymore, speculative evolution. It'd be nice to see speculative evolution come back as a medium in scientific media because I, and I'm sure many others, have fond memories of documentaries like "Alien Planet", "The Future is Wild" and of course "Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real".
I couldn't believe that they did this. I knew from day one that it was a movie. A fictional movie that I did enjoy. Just like the other documentaries like the dragon one they did where they found a frozen body to study on. I knew it was fake on that too. To me fiction like this is like the 90's TV show wish bone. A dog can't talk or tell stories, yet I enjoyed the escape from reality for a bit, and I would move on.
Then I became concerned when a family member had to do a report on megalodon and they used the documentary on TV.
i always thought the bloop were just a bunch of whales farting and died from a digestion-related disease
This should have been on the history channel at like 2 am
Does anyone remember that documentary that tried to prove the existence of fire breathing dragons? There was like a carcass in ice and stuff and there was like this whole explanation of how they could breathe fire and as a kid I was blown away 😂
Which?
Yessss! I loved The Last Dragon as a kid, poor six year old was devastated to find out it was fake. Although I will say all of these old "documentaries" that came about in the wake of The Blair Witch Project are certainly entertaining despite how they're presented
I remember when this came out. I got stoned and watched it. It took me longer than usual to recognize it was complete nonesense. I was ticked off and thought "first the history channel and now this. Whats the world coming to?" How animal planet didnt get sued for misleading people (lets be honest, they lied) is beyond me. It also harshed my mellow.
Ya know, it fooled me as a kid but as an adult I can tell it's a very clear mock-umentary. It's a whole genre, it's supposed to be fake and probably to spook kids
And yet a bunch of adults believed it when it came out, I'd say there's sort of a transition between the dragon mockumentary, that was marketed and the tagline was basically "what if the fiction was real", that one had a mix of speculative evolution and mockumentary, then this one came out and was more deceiving and then the Meg one, that one was straight up malicious, to this day it's the main source of meg conspiracies (same with the mermaid one but the meg one is inherently more believe because it's just "a bigger shark" rather than mermaids)
Hey Charlie!! Remember Me? I was scrolling on shorts and found a video and was like, hey is that Charlie!? I am so happy i found this channel and to see you posting. I remember the livestreams during covid those were pretty fun. We were actually watching the one where we found a poisons caterpillar 🐛 and you showed it.
Could’ve have said it was a speculative biology but know they decided to do this thanks for doing this so I don’t have to
I can't believe I have never heard of this, or should I say THESE, thank you for bringing this to my attention and delivering a good message about these kind of shows, it is truly a shame that something like this could be aired on the same Animal Planet that I loved watching as a kid for it's factual information about the animal kingdom.
Honestly it could have been a major hit if it was released as a movie not a documentary
That documentary scared the shit out of me when I was younger
As entertaining as I remember this cast of absurd "documentaries" being, it is such a shame that they went so far to deceive people. Heck, if played from a different angle it could've been a fantastic way to introduce the public to speculative biology/evolution projects, and how they can not only be fun thought experiments but highlight actual scientific theories on how animals evolve.
Man, the "aquatic ape theory" being in "Mermaids: the body found" is the documentary equivalent to Pacific Rim, a movie made in *2015* , mentioning that "dinosaurs have 2 brains"
I remember watching this documentary as a kid and eating it up. It was so fascinating to me and it was years later when I found out it was fake. I don't think they should have misled their audience, but it still did a really good job at entertaining people. Especially kids who were into cryptids like I was.
I was in middle school when this came out, and I completely believed it (mind you graphics in most video games and CGI in most movies was still pretty bad). The documentary seemed believable because I thought they were actual scientists and I recall reading about “The Bloop” in a textbook. This channel also never had done something like this before. They had a lot of educational content back in the day. I lost all respect for animal planet two months later when I found out it was complete bogus. I never watched that channel again after that.
My daughter watched this at her friends' house and they were crushed later to discover it was all fake. Pretty harsh way to introduce kids to the reality that the world will throw anyone under the bus for profit.
Finding Bigfoot has 9 seasons, they still haven’t found him…
If you want more content debunking pseudoscience/hoaxes. I'd suggest MiniMinuteMan's series on Ancient Apocalypse.
+
Bbc, natgeo aswell
@@Blackfish-m3h I meant for free on youtube.
@@personagenerator yeah, Im just asking or debunking about bbc docs since most of those scenes were cut and pasted clips together and are mostly in zoo and the anthropomorphizing of animals and as for natgeo, they sometimes lied 6:32
Even though it was fake, i liked it. Besides; since we haven't fully explored the oceans, i always thought something could exist
There are mermaid like people I saw a documentary about them I think they are from southeast Asia and they don't have flippers or anything but they do have naturally better ability to hold their breath underwater. They mostly are a fishing society and many are divers that can hold their breath for much longer than the average person. The more interesting thing is they studied non diving members of this community and even they had the same mutation that allowed for more efficient diving and breath holding
I love mermaids and I grew up loving mermaids but when I saw that documentary I thought it was fake and lame. The best documentary done about mermaids was a really old one that I saw when I was maybe 10 or 11. It talked about folklore, how mythical mermaids came to be, and all the mystery about them. Animal Planet however, made a fool of themselves. And as you have stated in the video, they gave false information making people discredit science and that's just sad and ridiculous!
Oh my goodness! You are on nature boom time! I thought I recognized you. I have been watching your channel for a while, and I loved nature boom time when I was younger. I can't believe it!
Ok I know you’re talking about one of the animal planet documentaries but what about the future is wild like what kind of skeletons do each future creature have
BS as it is, the aquatic ape theory sounds dope
they made those things straight out of a horror movie
0:53 bro talking about the bloop
To me, it seems like the people who didn't know that it was a mockumentary were experiencing an operator error situation.
Where did you find this I've been trying to watch the movie for so long now
Thanks. That’s 13-ish years I’ll never get back. I held onto bits of both of those documentaries and swore something is out there. Well, maybe there still is but it isn’t this. I’m sad now
I see you talked about this a month before The Little Mermaid 2023
“It was an underwater sound coming out of under water” yes . the floor is made out of floor
Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real was honestly more believable than this tripe.
Funny enough that one was created by Charlie Foley, yet it didn't present itself as some real thing the government is covering up.
I remember watching this and sharing to my friends when I was 11 years old. AND with confidence saying “It’s animal planet! A science channel about being educational! So it must be true” 🤦🏽♀️
I’m 24 now and I’m so embarrassed about being that gullible as a kid
To debunk this even further, no one said these bones were the same species. The tail fin was probably from a manatee, the hand from a dolphin, and there are more marine mammals than just mermaids, which are indeed not real. Most sightings of mermaids have come from manatees, as some of the first people to see them described them as ugly. Cmon man give the underwater jellybean a break :'(
I remember my science teacher made us watch this documentary as homework, and to make an essay about it. I've always loved animals and cryptozoology, so I was the only one who wrote that the documentary didn't make sense and was fake.
I failed science that year 😂😂😂.
i remember watching this documentary when i was like 11-12 and i believed every word they said.. FOR YEARS. i mean i appreciate the idea that tries to explain evolution that could have happened (but obvs didn't) but doing so without a disclaimer and presenting it as real is just so damaging and harmful.
Same. People still think it's real. 🤦
I remember watching this one, it and alot of the decisions it made disenfranchised me with Discovery and Animal Planet, BUT, I do admit it is a fun little thought experiment and a look into speculative evolution
I genuinely believe that if this documentary was presented as a work of fiction instead of them trying to convince people that it was real, not as many people would've had as big of a problem with it. The same goes for the Megalodon documentary as well.
Are there any Tasmanian tiger skulls or bones still left somewhere? Have you seen them? Thanks
I TOTALLY AGREE..... it was a dissapointment and a new low and just wrong, pointless and unworthy of A channel that calls its self documentary or science based
Yeah…
This shit really needed a disclaimer at the beginning that said “Warning! Dis shit is fake! Please don’t take it seriously!”
The last time he didn't speak the speed of a snail
They did not claim it to be a documentary - they called it a mockumentary - as I understand it, they were not trying to hoax people - simply get their attention on the damage caused by missile testing.
the grip this documentary had on me 💀 i was like 6 when it came out so i believed every word lmao
Gone are the days of Science Channel/TLC-The Learning Channel/Discovery/History Channel/Animal Planet and actually having real accurate scientific programming. RIP.
I remember watching this. My family was really excited, since it had been advertised for weeks. At the very end of the program, I saw the disclaimer it was fake. I was so angry, I not only stopped watching Animal Planet, I never paid for cable TV after that.
The History Channel had released Ancient Aliens the year prior, so there was no reason for me to have cable TV after that. I also ended my Netflix account after another fake documentary. The artist Damien Hirst made one to advertise his new gallery pieces. I didn't realize it was fake until I noticed one of the works looked like a girl in a popular music group. 🤦🏻♀️
What do you mean it never should’ve been made? I love that documentary!🤩🧜♀️
I used to watch animal planet religiously as a kid, particularly river monsters and big cat diary. I was so obsessed with these shows and for the most part they tended to be factual, and i was 9 when this mockentary came out and had already found out the tooth fairy wasnt real so i knew mermaids weren’t real and all that but when i saw this on Animal Planet i was so convinced that wow maybe they really are real, maybe theyre not beautiful half woman half fish creatures but more realistic intelligent ape like animals and i was so excited and truly believed in mermaids till i was like 11-12 bc of this😭
i saw the advertisements for this when it first aired. i was very intrigued. the marketing, I thought was phenomenal. i remember seeing a website they encouraged you to go to at the end of every commercial for the film. So, I went on. To my surprise, all that was there was a notice that the site had been shut down by the DOJ. Really intriguing stuff. I don't give a shit about how it actually played out, I bought into the hype and it was masterful
Man, you can make just about anything entertaining and fun.
The Future is Wild, Dragons: a Fantasy Made Real, and even that one with the werewolves were far better at the docufiction route than this and the megalodon crap.
There's two versions of this special. One's from Japan and one's from America. The Japanese version is way different. Different beginning and ending.
Documentaries about mythological creatures are amusingly silly.
yall where can i watch this documentary i really need to watch it
I felt the same. Betrayed and disappointed. Now I don't really ever watch documentaries because I constantly question their evidence and it takes the fun out of it. I'm in it for the facts and reality of how interesting life can be, not for manufactured stories to prove fairy tales for entertainment.
Even Bbc is like this
5:56 the CGI in that video was way better than Marvel’s phase 4.
I agree with your review except the part about "should never have been made" because it is "thoroughly entertaining"!!!
And if something is clearly just meant for entertainment and succeeds at that, then that's a win.
A lot like Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real
Thanks for making this video as I just watch - animal planet - mermaid the documentary. I had always thought Animal planet made only factual stories and this program literally turned me off their series. Maybe just me now their programs gives the vibes of fake news i.e trashy gossip magazine news. Really sad Animal planet are going down this path.
Bbc, natgeo and discovery are the same
I keep an open mind about these new discoveries, as a young lad we should do a lot of fishing and deep sea fishing here in the ocean. During the sardine run in the 1997, when the sardines washed out near the coast of Durban, we where in the boat trying to net them and my friends and I saw the most weirdest thing in the ocean. It looked like the same thing the documentary aired.
I am not an animal planet documentaries person and I just watched this today on prime video. Maybe the documentary is fake but what my friends and I witnessed was real in the coast of Durban KZN in 1997.
1:03 Yes, most underwater sounds are recorded under water... ;)
If I remember correctly Animal Planet collabed with Brave Wildernes on a series previously. I wonder how it went.
After this documentary came out, Dr Robertson moved to Louisiana and made duck calls
Hey...I beileve in the Megalodon....😅 I think they're WAY smaller due to inbreeding and possibly mingling their bloodine with their closest cousin, great whites. And I beileve there isn't many of them still around. So no, i dont think we have a giant 60ft shark swimking around...more like 25-30ft, maybe 40ft, and if they managed to survive the ice age maybe they evolved to handle colder less oxygenated waters, so they can only be found in the deep artic sea (with sperm whales, other large whales, and colossal squid, and which would be their food source) Would also explain why we haven't found or seen them because most of our artic waters still need to be explored....not to mention we've seen crazier sea creatures that are hard to beileve exist due to crazy environments like deep sea gigantism! I just have a hard time letting go of the Meg because our youngest Megalodon tooth was dated as only being 10,000 years old...which means at one point we humans possibly shared the ocean with this awesome (and terrifying) predator! And we keep finding more and more sea creatures that we find out aren't extinct, like we thought, every year! Some of them we thought had died out millions of years ago but nope surprise! They're still around! So why is the Meg and different? Because 10k years is just to close for me to consider the Meg dead and gone. Yeah I know I'm crazy. As for Animal Planet (o and the discovery channel did this dumb shit too btw) I hated their FAKE documentaries! They really disappointed me and made me so angry! They could have used real science and made something interesting but no...they went this stupid and unscientific route. Mermaids ain't real, the Earth is a roundish lumpy potato, and as for the Megalodon...We all have our conspiracy theory hills to die on and the Meg is mine. 😅😂 (Even though I know scientifically that the chances of Meg still swimming in our ocean is slim to none. But it's chances live on in my crazy brain and heart)
The youngest megalodon tooth isn’t 10,000 years old. Megalodon died out 3 million ago.
Honestly, I'll never understand how so many people thought this mockumentary and the megalodon one were real or how they can accuse Discovery of lying. Even as a fairly young child, I knew both were fake and completely understood the concept of what they were doing even without seeing any disclaimers. I mean, it was so obviously fake? Idk. X.x
What I hated about these were that I knew they were fake, I thought it was obvious, even as a kid, but my parents thought they were real and would argue that to me.
on a channel that covers real nature topics i could definitely see how a kid would think it’s real, especially if they like mermaids or whatever. hell, just look around in the comments and you’ll see people who believed it.
It was not obvious for many people unfortunately. I work as a museum guide, and last year I worked in a sea-themed museum. The CRAZY AMOUNT of people that asked me stuff about the Megalodon and were convinced it was still alive (some citing that specific documentary) is unreal.
I feel like a disclaimer would have been useful, even just because I could have pointed that out and explained that it was fake without a doubt. No mermaids though luckily ahaha
I like the idea of trying to argue if these creatures are real and showing theories and folklore to try to further discover or debunk the myth. But using fake scientists is fkd up
I hope this is a mockumentary that went badly because people thought it was real, kinda like the national geographic megalodon one
I was 18 when I watched this documentary. It made me stop believing what I saw on TV and, of course, never trusted the channel again.
I saw this one when I was a kid. I was confused because it felt so fake, but it was aired on Animal Planet. Their reputation made we want to think it was real. They should have been clear with their audience that it was just fantasy.
"Reality is often disappointing."
- Based Thanos
Watched that doc when it came out. I was in middle school and was 100% convinced that mermaids were real
I think it could have been a very cool mockumentory, if they would have portrayed it that way. Like if they had said it was fake, it could have been interesting. Imagining how mermaids might have interacted with other aquatic creatures, and then going in and explaining “so here’s the actual evidence of “mermaids” here’s what people have mistaken, here’s the culture explanations from different areas, etc”
Where can I watch this at?
On TH-cam!
I was really young when this came out and 100% believed it until I went running to my mom to show it to her. She looked at five seconds of footage, said “that is is fake as hell why do you watch garbage like that? Read a book.”
Thank you mom.
I haven't watched anything from the science channel since their fake documentaries aired. Such a violation of trust and respect. You're spot on, but that's why I watch your show now.
As art, it is interesting, but it needed to be more clear that is not real
It’s pretty generous to call it “pseudoscience”. “Cynical ratings grab wholecloth fiction” would be more accurate.
I guess they watched the Sector 9 movie and thought: "yeah, let's do this sh!t but with the Zoras from Legend of Zelda"
I just assumed this was intended as a mockumentary? Of course it’s not real, but it’s far from the first time mockumentaries have been made to speculate, commentate and entertain rather than presenting the truth. I studied them in school as a genre of fiction back in the early 2000s.
I remember believing in mermaids when I was ten because of this, watched it with my dad, those were the best years of my life, I believed in magic, and it has inspired my art as well as my fantasy writing since.
It’s a shame you didn’t watch it when you were a kid, you would have loved it, watching it as an adult is completely different, an analytical approach is inevitable.