Mermaid Hoax Has Viewers Buzzing
The folks at Animal Planet certainly have the country buzzing this week. Sunday night's airing of Mermaids:The New Evidence set a new ratings record for the channel even though it was all a hoax!
The shocker is that people actually bought the story that mermaids actually exist. Animal Planet said this about the broadcast. "We wanted people to approach the story with a sense of possibility and a sense of wonder," Charlie Foley, the show's executive producer, told ABC News. "Hopefully that's what 'Mermaids' allowed viewers to do . . . allowed them to suspend their disbelief."
After it aired, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement which was meant to clarify for perplexed viewers whether or not mermaids are real.
"The belief in mermaids may have arisen at the very dawn of our species," the statement read. "But are mermaids real? No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Why, then, do they occupy the collective unconscious of nearly all seafaring peoples? That's a question best left to historians, philosophers, and anthropologists."