hi! hope this isnt too out of the blue, but youre the most knowledgeable person on biology that i know, so i wanted to ask a question. im currently designing a mermaid-ish species, and i want to get a good alance between just humanoid enough and clearly being a fish creature. do you have any info that could help me?
Ok, so, basically it sounds like you’re trying to make a fish shaped sorta like a human in front. What I suggest in general is researching fish with limb and head structures similar to us, and mashing them together into something reasonably well-constructed. Looking into amphibian anatomy would be useful as well, because most amphibians are basically fish with developed limbs.
However, I must confess I’m usually pretty cagey about fish-based mermaids as it’s very hard to get fish anatomy to blend well with humanoid features. Taxonomically we’re very far apart, and a lot of fish are decidedly fusiform, whereas humans… are… not. We’re more like vertical cylinders, which is kind of weird even for bipeds, most of which are eggs with legs (think ostrich). It’s one of the same problems I’ve had with making humanoid fliers, as humanoids aren’t really designed to go head first through air or water. First of all our necks don’t bend that way easily (which can be fixed with a longer more flexible neck) and our shoulders are not terribly aero/hydrodynamic (which can be fixed by altering shoulder and torso anatomy to be more smooth and bullet-shaped). With humanoid fliers it’s a little easier to get away with weird necks and torsos because they’ve still got their telltale legs, but with mermaids the torso and head’s all the human they have to them. Hence the problem, at least to me.
I encourage anyone trying to design specbio mermaids to look into alternatives to the classic open-water fish body. For one, it’s a lot easier to design cetacean and seal mermaids bc it’s intuitive to mash mammal with mammal, but also human anatomy lends itself more to sedentary fish. Seahorse mermaids, for instance, could use their hands and arms to cling onto kelp, frogfish mermaids could use their arms to walk along the bottom (like actual frogfish do, lol), and goby mermaids could use their arms to burrow and perch on the sea floor. A speedy mermaid ultimately would have little use for arms, because arms would get in the way of swimming quickly in open water. If you’re determined to make speedy mermaids i will not dissuade you, but unless they essentially have retractable arms they’re always gonna be a bit awkward looking. To me. Again, this is entirely opinion based, draw what makes you happy, but this is my two cents on designing ““realistic”“ mermaids.
