By: Chloe Cheng

Childhood bedtime stories always portrayed mermaids as beautiful, mythical creatures, with human features in their upper body and colorful, scaly tails. Movies then presented them with the talent of singing alluring melodies in their clear, crisp voices underwater. However, science proves this otherwise.

Sound travels with vibrations, creating sound waves that travel through a medium, which can be in any form of solid, liquid, or gas. These vibrations are then detected by the cochlea in the inner ear. The cochlea is filled with fluid that senses the vibrations and sets nerves into motion, transforming the vibrations into electrical impulses for the brain to understand.

Underwater, instead of detecting sound through the cochlea, the vibration is sensed by the skull as the sound waves pass through water and into the head. Additionally, sound travels much faster underwater than on land due to its density, which allows particles to transfer vibrations much quicker. Although humans can detect sound underwater, it tends to be unclear and hard to distinguish specific words, as bone conduction of sound is rarely used and therefore is not as effective as air conduction.

If human features cannot detect sound well underwater, how do mermaids communicate, and most importantly, sing underwater in such clear voices? The answer may lie in marine animals. Since marine animals permanently live underwater, they evolved to have certain features to help with communication. One of which, often seen in whales and dolphins, is their lower jaw. It is directly connected to their middle ear with a certain kind of fat that transmits sound waves well. In order for mermaids to hear clearly underwater, they may have these features, unlike a typical human.

Another possible feature would be convertible ears, which are quite applicable to mermaids. They would be able to hear as humans do on land, but once undersea, their ears are filled with a type of fluid that helps with detecting and transmitting sounds.

Other than being able to listen clearly, the system that marine animals use to “create” sound is important as well. For whales and dolphins, they reuse the air inside of them, to help with staying underwater for long periods of time. Other marine animals create sound by clicking or rubbing their body features. To sing their beautiful melodies, mermaids would need these body functions, or else their voices would be muffled and unclear.

In summary, sounds work very differently underwater than on land, requiring different body systems to be able to understand and produce those sounds. In order for the mythical mermaids to be able to sing underwater as we pictured them, they need at least a few of the features listed above. This leads us to question: are mermaids, if they truly exist, really what we believe them to be? Or was it all fantasy and imagination?