Am I going crazy or are water movies kind of having a big moment right now? Avatar 2,
Black Panther 2, Aquaman 2. And of course,
the Disney Live action remake of The Little Mermaid Coming up soon. With all these ocean
movies in theaters it’s no wonder everyone in Hollywood has been so salty lately.
Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the show that has gadgets and gizmos a-plenty,
whozits and whatzits galore. But my favorite doodad has got to be the subscribe button. Well,
it's that time again loyal theorists. That wonderful time of the year where our corporate
overlords over at the Walt Disney Company decide to take one of their beloved classic
animated films, suck all the joy out of it, and then produce a lifeless live action remake that
somehow manages to make a billion dollars. That's right. Today, we're talking about
The Little Mermaid, which hits theaters later this month. And let me just say,
I'm not hopeful. I knew this one was going to be fighting an uphill battle the second
the trailers showcased the song Part of Your World as this big power ballad moment for Ariel,
just riffing on higher and higher notes. That's not what that moment is, guys. It's
not a vocal showcase. It's supposed to be a sad and reflective song. Ariel is literally
yearning for a different life. Now, let me be clear. This isn't Halle Bailey's fault. It's
an issue of direction, of missing the point of the original story and characterization of the
song. But who knows? Maybe I'll be surprised. Let's just say I'm not holding my breath as I
prepare to dive under da sea. That said, one thing that I can't deny is that trailers for this movie
have gotten me thinking. If this is meant to be a live action remake, well, you know, there's
just no such thing as a live action mermaid. And while I certainly like the designs that they did,
what would a realistic mermaid look like? The whole half human half fish thing? Like, how
would that even work biologically? Could that even work biologically? Could a creature like Ariel
actually be real? or would she end up looking more like a cryptid creepypasta? And before
you call out that piece of common knowledge that mermaids would just look like manatees because
old time sailors mistook manatees for mermaids. Yeah. Turns out that wasn't a widespread thing.
In fact, as far as my research showed, it only ever happened once. And the guy that
couldn't tell a dugong from a bathing beauty was everyone's favorite clumsy conqueror:
Christopher Columbus himself. Yep. It looks like Columbus. The same guy who mistook the Americas
for the East Indies was just as bad at identifying aquatic mammals as he was the continents.
So what would a biologically accurate humanoid aquatic species evolve to look like if we wanted
them to be part of our world? Let's just say Prince Eric would probably want to seriously
reconsider his decision to kiss da girl. And in perhaps the strangest twist of all,
Ursula would probably be doing Ariel the biggest favor possible by taking away her voice.
Don't believe me? Well, what more is you looking for all you crabs? Let's dive in.
So how does one go about figuring out the biology of a fictional aquatic humanoid that
does not actually exist? Well, first off, we know for a fact that whatever we're creating,
it's going to have to be a mammal. Yeah, for as much as I would have loved for the answer
here to pull from some of the truly gnarly real life creatures that live deep underwater, it just
doesn't line up with the physical characteristics that we see in these iconic Disney designs.
First off, the mermaid tail, Ariel and all the other mermaids have tails that move up
and down when they swim as opposed to side to side. Believe it or not, this
is actually a feature that evolved exclusively for underwater mammals because they had limbs
underneath their bodies that eventually turned into fins. And they move up and down because
that's the way their backbones naturally bend. The also other aquatic mammals like dolphins,
whales and seals. Secondly, we got to talk about the hair. Ariel and Triton have truly
luscious locks. Since all mammals have hair and fish don't, clearly mermaids
are going to have to be more mammal than fish. Plus, the sight of Ariel without hair is just
a cursed image that my brain cannot unsee. Lastly, this one's a bit awkward to say, but
um, the seashells. King Triton has himself a pair of nipples, and one can reasonably assume
that the same is true for all the other mermaids that live in Atlantica. That right there is a
feature exclusive to mammals that produce milk for their young. So pretty much any way you slice it,
there's a lot of evidence pointing towards our Disney mermaids having to be mammals.
Knowing that, there's actually a point in the evolutionary history where this
sort of divergence could have occurred. This is known by some researchers as the
Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. Basically, it says that humans evolved from apes that either lived close
to or in the water, and that our upright stance was borne out of the need to keep our heads above
the surface. This could be where our realistic mermaids diverge from the rest of the species
during this period of early human evolution, going under the waves instead of standing above them.
That said, right off the bat, there's one major problem that we immediately have to address.
Disney's mermaids very clearly breathe both below the water and above it. This isn't the thing that
aquatic mammals are able to do. Even the ones that spend a lot of time underwater like whales.
Instead, they have to occasionally surface to take massive, deep breaths before submerging again.
For instance, the longest a whale has been recorded. Holding their breath was 222 minutes,
certainly a long time, but also a lot shorter than what we see Ariel and the gang doing.
So what would have to be going on with our mermaids? Well, our real mermaids would have
two possible solutions here. The first would be to survive purely off of cutaneous respiration.
Basically, that's just a fancy way of saying that an animal is able to breathe through its
skin. This is actually pretty common across a lot of species of frogs, sea snakes and
turtles. Basically, the skin is thin and moist, allowing gases like oxygen to pass through. And
believe it or not, but some mammals, including us humans, are able to respirate in the same way.
For us, this sort of skin breathing only accounts for a very negligible amount of oxygen. It's like
1- 2%. It’s not nearly enough for us to live as is. But if a mermaid needed to evolve to breathe
more through their skin, it's possible. Honestly, the biggest problem as it applies to mermaids is
that you're just not able to get a lot of oxygen through your skin using cutaneous respiration.
As a result, it tends to be reserved for smaller animals that stay relatively inactive. So our
merpeople would have to be really tiny and lazy, like a frog or a flatworm. That said,
the second and better solution here would be for our merpeople to evolve both lungs and
gills. This is certainly rare in the animal kingdom, but it's not entirely unheard of.
Case in point, the lungfish. Lungfish are known to live in environments that are low in oxygen,
like stagnant pools, swamps, shallow lakes. As such, they have both lungs and gills to help meet
their oxygen needs. When the oxygen concentration in the water is low, lungfish can gulp air at the
surface and then use their lungs to extract it. When the concentration in the water is high,
though, that's when they're using their gills. This sort of dual system would help explain away
exactly what we see in the movies; Arial breathing underwater as well as on land. So our realistic
Disney mermaids are definitely mammals and are either really small and breathing through their
skin or human sized with both lungs and gills. But what would they actually look like? Well, to
know that we first have to figure out where they live. After all, an aquatic mammal that evolves
to survive in the Caribbean is going to look a lot different than the one that evolves to survive at
the South Pole. Thankfully, we can actually figure out an answer. Throughout the movie,
we see what the ecology of Atlantica looks like. There are kelp forests, hydrothermal vents and
most importantly, coral reefs. This means that the body of water that we're dealing
with is likely warm, eliminating the North Sea near Denmark, which is usually
where people assume that this movie takes place, *whispering* including ourselves in
a previous theory. Woops, sorry about that. We can also get clues from the live action
remake. You see, this new movie replaces the original design of Ariel's fish friend
Flounder with this… thing. Gone is all the fun and whimsy of that original design. But in its place,
is scientific accuracy. Yay? Notice the five black vertical stripes and the yellow
back. That right there is the Sergeant Major Fish, a species that lives in the
Atlantic Ocean as well as the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, the Mediterranean is definitely going to
be our best guess for Ariel's home based on other clues that we see in the movie. For instance,
here in Prince Eric's bathtub, we see statues of what looked to be fish. In reality, though, those
are meant to be dolphins, and they match the art style of various fountains found throughout Italy.
We also see flamingos appearing in the song Kiss da Girl, a tropical bird that can appear
in lagoons, deltas and estuaries around the Mediterranean. I could keep going on
and looking at the plants and animals of this region, but perhaps the strongest evidence of
all comes not from the movie itself, but rather from a video about the movie. On the official
Disney Princess YouTube channel while reviewing fun facts about the film, they outright say this.
Not to be outdone, they follow it up with this.
I mean, it doesn't get much more clear cut than that, it's coming from an official source. So
with that finally settled, we can actually start looking at how these mermaids would
look and why. First off, some basic stuff. It's almost certain that our mermaids would
have webbed fingers on their hands. This would be a really simple adaptation that
would help our mermaids a lot, allowing them to more easily swim and navigate underwater.
It wouldn't even be that wild for this to become prominent through natural selection.
Humans today are often born with syndactyly, or fingers and toes that are fuzed together.
So it's very possible that this sort of thing would absolutely show up in an evolutionary
offshoot of humans. Our mermaids would also have eyes, obviously, but those eyes would
likely be bigger and with larger pupils. You see, while fish eyes and human eyes
work largely the same way, focusing light onto a retina in the back of the eye, fish
eyes are usually rounder and more flexible. This allows them to quickly adjust to changes in water
pressure and the way that water is bending the light. Because fish and mermaids live underwater,
they also have to deal with lower light conditions. As such, having a larger
retina with a higher density of photoreceptors is going to help their overall sensitivity to light.
We'd also likely see their eyes having a coating of tears. A slippery, oozy secretion meant to
protect them, similar to what dolphins use to protect their eyes. It's also likely that
our merpeople wouldn't have any sort of human looking ears. If you look at images of whales,
dolphins, walruses and seals, you'll notice that basically none of them have ears.
Instead, they have these two little holes in their heads that act like ears. This is
because any sort of external ear is going to create drag in the water and slow them down,
thereby getting eliminated during the evolutionary process. So at most, our merpeople would just
have two holes in the sides of their head. Speaking of drag, what about that hair? Arguably
the most iconic part of Ariel's whole aesthetic is her long, bright red head of hair. But would
that be a thing for a real mermaid? Certainly not. Just like ears, long hair would provide
a lot of drag as our mermaids tried to swim through the water. You ever wonder why Olympic
swimmers wear caps that cover up their heads? One of the big reasons is to keep their hair
down to reduce drag. They also have to shave all their body hair off. And I mean all of it
for the exact same reason. They want as little drag as possible when they swim. This track for
most marine mammals, whales and dolphins have a few whisker-like hairs to help them sense their
environment, but otherwise they're smooth skinned. Similarly, manatees have little tactile hairs all
over their body. Seals and walruses, on the other hand, have both whiskers and layers of
slick fur that stick well to their skin. Our mermaids are probably going to have
something similar either no hair or slick hair that runs down all over their body. But
this does bring up another point. See, mammals don't just have hair as a means to be stylish.
A lot of the time, fur or hair is needed to keep these mammals warm,
trapping a layer of heat between the skin and the fur. Without that hair, well,
our mermaids are going to start suffering if they don't have protection from the cold. According to
the Encyclopedia Britannica, temperatures in the deep parts of the Mediterranean tend to be about
55 degrees Fahrenheit or 13 degrees Celsius. Now, humans can begin suffering hypothermia at
temperatures as high as 60 degrees Fahrenheit or 15.6 degrees Celsius. So our mermaids are going to
need some sort of solution here, otherwise they're going to be freezing to death. So again, we turn
to other marine mammals to see how they survive in these depths. And the thing that we find in
common across all of them: whales, dolphins, manatees, seals and walruses. Blubber. In case
you don't know, blubber is a type of fat tissue that's just really good at insulating body heat.
Basically, it allows animals to stay in cold environments by keeping their
body heat inside of themselves. Kind of like an internal blanket. Additionally,
it also has the advantage of adding buoyancy while you swim, meaning that it helps save energy while
moving through the water. If an animal has blubber, it typically covers the entire body,
so that's going to inform how our mermaid looks. Let's just say they're not going to have the thin
figure of Ariel or the swole chest muscles of Triton. They're going to have to be a bit on
the chonky side to survive at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Also, their skin is
likely to be the color that we see on dolphins and whales, sort of light blue-gray on their
stomachs and a dark blue-gray on their backs. This allows it to act as a natural camouflage
against the backdrop of the ocean. So, our realistic mermaid? Probably not what
Disney has plastered all over posters for this movie. They're going to be mammals with gills
and lungs. They're going to have webbed hands. They're going to have big eyes coated with oozy,
gooey tears. They're going to have bluish-gray skin with no ears and no hair except for a couple
whiskers. And it's all going to be wrapped up in a chonky dad bod from layers of blubber that are
covering their whole body to keep it warm. Also, they’d likely evolve a more pointed
head to help them stay hydrodynamic as they swim through the water. Just looking at this thing,
Eric, definitely would have had to have been very open minded in order to fall in love with this.
But there is one final detail about our anatomically correct mermaid that's really scary.
And it's likely going to make you never look at The Little Mermaid the same way again. Remember,
the whole source of conflict within this movie comes from Ariel's voice. She loves Erik,
and she wants to go to the surface to be with him. But Triton says no.
So Ariel strikes a bargain with Ursula, a sort of deal with the underwater devil, where Ariel
gives up her voice to be able to walk on land and pursue her relationship with the prince. And while
in the movie this creates a central conflict in real life. This decision to give up her voice,
it would have literally been the single best thing that Ariel could have done in the situation.
Why? Well, because if she had her voice, she likely would have killed Erik. Let me explain. You
see, things aren't always better down where it's wetter because the ocean is a loud place. Like,
really loud. You might not believe it if you're relaxing on the boat or at the beach. That's
because underwater sounds reflect off the surface of the water and back down into it.
Yeah, it might shock you because human ears aren't evolved to hear underwater,
but water is an excellent conductor of sound. So much so that sound can travel
four times faster and farther underwater than in air. Plenty of sea creatures actually use
this to their advantage, making really loud sounds to communicate. Seahorses can growl at
a volume of 115 decibels to intimidate predators, louder than a rock concert.
The Toadfish attempts to attract a mate by vibrating their swim bladders at a volume
of 177 decibels, louder than a shotgun blast. And the pistol shrimp can snap its claw shut
at a volume of 220 decibels. Louder than a NASA rocket launch. And it's not just
fish and invertebrates either. The aquatic mammals are also really loud. The elephant
seal can bark at a volume of 126 decibels. Bottlenose dolphins can reach 163 decibels,
and blue whale calls can cap out at 188. But that's nothing compared to the single loudest
marine mammal and the loudest animal in the entire world. The sperm whale, which can produce clicking
sounds up to 233 decibels. Now anything above 120 can harm a human ear. It only takes 165 decibels
to burst your eardrums, so that 233 decibel click, that's already going to be some bad news.
Those sperm whale clicks have reportedly been so loud that they can cause temporary paralysis
in parts of the human body. Science journalist James Nestor has even written that the clicks
could potentially, quote, vibrate a human body to death. If our mermaids are reaching anything
close to that in terms of their vocal volume, at minimum, once Ariel comes above the water,
just the act of speaking is going to physically harm Erik, potentially bursting his eardrum and
permanently rendering him deaf. Someone call Mr. Beast. I think we have patient 1001. And
if the mermaids are somehow able to get as loud as a sperm whale? Well, it's a good
thing that it don't take a word to kiss da girl because Eric wouldn't be under the sea. He'd be
six feet under the ground. I guess all of them should be happy that Ursula wanted Ariel's voice,
because at that point, you have to wonder who the true, poor, unfortunate soul really is.
But hey! That's just a theory. A FILM THEORY! aaaaaaaand cut.
Do you want more Disney theories right now? Well why not check out our trilogy
of videos where we look into Disney's Death Count? Which of Disney's classic animated
films is the most deadly? Trust me, you're going to be surprised by the movie with the
most deaths. If you want something a bit more recent, check out the video talking about the
truly terrifying copyright laws that surround the new Winnie the Pooh horror remake and why
this might just be Disney's worst nightmare. As always, my friends, I'll see you next week.