Mermaids Breathing

[valiant12]

I recently found one of my old stories featuring a human offshoot calling themselves mermaids, who have strong psychic powers and have evolved to live in a world with a lot of ocean water (similar to our earth ). Since those mermaids have evolved from humans the breath with their lungs and spend most of their time on land.
But what about mermaids who are not directly related to humans. Which method of breathing is more suitable for vaguely humanoid sea creatures. Breathing with lungs like mammals or breathing with gills like fish.
Pros of breathing with lungs-
-cetacean like tails look better
-air breathing mermaids can probably learn human language
- Is more realistic for mammalian mermaids have breasts and long hair. Beautiful monster girls make good covers.
Cons
-I'm not sure that mammalian mermaids can build a civilization. Humpback whales are smart, probably smarter than humans, but they are busy resurfacing to breath.
-humanoid creatures making whale like blows would be silly


pros of breathing with gills-
-they can spend their whole life underwater, building underwater cities. Underwater cities make great covers.
-they don't have blowholes.
-they are more exotic
cons
-they can't speak
-fish tails are weird
-no sonar
-no breasts
-fishes aren't very smart

 

[K.S. Crooks]

I don't understand why the ones who breath with gills can't speak. People can breath through their nose and speak with their mouth. On earth there are lung fish which can breath in the air. Perhaps your mermaids can be amphibians, which would allow them to breath and communicate in the water and on land. They could use some type of telepathy or sign language, but remember sound travels better under water than in the air. You can always create a new organ to facilitate breathing or communication. Whether or not they have fish tails or very webbed feet depends on what you want them to be capable of doing and whether they need to come on land.

 

[Ireth]

Interesting question. My mermaids are amphibious, using both lungs and gills. This allows them to vocalize above the surface when they lure human men to their deaths (especially in their coming-of-age ceremony). During the ceremony, they use scarves woven of seaweed to keep their gills wet while they breathe with their lungs. They also speak underwater (probably by sonar), though some also use sign language (the MC is deaf, and her pod uses that to communicate with her).

My merfolk are considerably more aquatic-mammal and less human in form; their tails and genitals are modeled after dolphins, so there's not a lot by way of visible sexual dimorphism between the three genders (male, female, hermaphrodite). Their main allure to humans is the song they sing rather than sexual appeal. Humans who transform into mermen (the whole point of the luring-to-death) retain some human-looking features, especially facial features and skin color. These are typically bred out due to interbreeding with pure-blooded merfolk. There are pureblooded mermen, but there's a significant skew between the genders that favors females above all, so they need to maintain a balance somehow.

 

[evolution_rex]

For a mermaid, I always thought they were more of a humanoid manatee. If humans or a human's ancestor somehow managed to evolve to be live in the water, then I'd imagine it would breath very similar to that of seals and manatees or to that of dolphins and whales. Mermaids are often seen in images as resting on rocks, so I'd go more toward the being able to breath out of their nostrils. They would have to use sonar to communicate underwater but would be able to go without breathing air for long periods of time.

 

[Tom]

I have two stories so far with merfolk, and I've gone both routes with each.

In the first story, merfolk are a magically created offshoot of the human race. They were made when a council of mages decided to play God and alter humans so they could adapt to survive in extreme environments. The magic went wrong, and the merfolk--along with several other "mutated" races--came into being.

So these merfolk are essentially augmented humans, so I made them a little closer to human physiology. They're amphibious, absorbing oxygen through their skin both above and below water, with the additional aid of small, mostly underdeveloped lungs on land. Their ability to breathe air comes into play when they have to move about above-water, usually when the body of water they inhabit disappears during the dry season. Using their pelvic fins, which are really vestigial legs, they crawl or drag themselves across land to a new home. A slime coat covers their skin, so they don't dry out in the sun.

I decided that these merfolk can't speak like humans can, which has cut them off from communication with humans and the other augmented races. Their lungs are too small to provide the air flow required to provide a voice, and because of that their vocal chords have disappeared. They communicate to one another through movements of the tail, hands, and the prehensile tentacles that sprout from their heads in place of hair.

In the second story, merfolk are the origin of the human race. When a natural disaster renders the ocean water poisonous to them, they channel their species' strong magic into a single, massive spell that transforms them into the land-dwelling humans they are at the story's current time.

I made these merfolk more alien, and based them more on fish than I did the other type, as they don't originate from humans. These merfolk have true gills, and can't breathe above water. They have scales instead of amphibious skin, and can't stay above water for too long, or their skin dries out in the sun. They have fully developed vocal chords, and the highly sensitive tympanic membranes on the sides of their heads allow them to communicate over extremely long distances. They also use a form of echolocation to find prey, identify predators, and navigate in dark or murky water.

By the way, neither type feeds their young by lactation. So that means no mammary glands.

 

[valiant12]

For a mermaid, I always thought they were more of a humanoid manatee. If humans or a human's ancestor somehow managed to evolve to be live in the water, then I'd imagine it would breath very similar to that of seals and manatees or to that of dolphins and whales. Mermaids are often seen in images as resting on rocks, so I'd go more toward the being able to breath out of their nostrils. They would have to use sonar to communicate underwater but would be able to go without breathing air for long periods of time.

Breathing like a seal sound realistic for a humanoid sea creature.
One of the things I hate about writing fantasy is how I can't just explain to the reader that my mermaids have respiratory system and circulatory system similar to seals and they don't need whale like blowholes to breathe.
One the other hand that's one of the things that make writing fantasy, so enjoyable, since fantasy, especially high fantasy doesn't use modern science and modern culture, a fantasy story don't get obsolete the moment there is a technological or scientific breakthrough

 

[Russ]

Breathing like a seal sound realistic for a humanoid sea creature.
One of the things I hate about writing fantasy is how I can't just explain to the reader that my mermaids have respiratory system and circulatory system similar to seals and they don't need whale like blowholes to breathe.
One the other hand that's one of the things that make writing fantasy, so enjoyable, since fantasy, especially high fantasy doesn't use modern science and modern culture, a fantasy story don't get obsolete the moment there is a technological or scientific breakthrough

You make some good points. But I would like to disagree with you on one. Just because a tech or breakthrough happens it does not make the work obsolete. The only time where that happens is when the book's conceit is predicated on technology that will not or cannot ever happen so centrally it falls apart without it. I read lots of SF when I was young that got the tech predictions wrong, but some of that is still great fiction.

 

[valiant12]

You make some good points. But I would like to disagree with you on one. Just because a tech or breakthrough happens it does not make the work obsolete. The only time where that happens is when the book's conceit is predicated on technology that will not or cannot ever happen so centrally it falls apart without it. I read lots of SF when I was young that got the tech predictions wrong, but some of that is still great fiction.

I agree that having a nice plot and interesting characters is more important than being scientifically occurred.

 

[valiant12]

They communicate to one another through movements of the tail, hands, and the prehensile tentacles that sprout from their heads in place of hair.

That's an interesting idea, however tentacle hair is kinda weird. I personally love weird hair, but tentacle heir, which can be used to communicate with others is too much for my taste.

 

[Russ]

I agree that having a nice plot and interesting characters is more important than being scientifically occurred.

And then you just call it a "period peice" or a "classic".

 

[Tom]

That's an interesting idea, however tentacle hair is kinda weird. I personally love weird hair, but tentacle heir, which can be used to communicate with others is too much for my taste.

Well, I based the tentacle-hair on octopus tentacles (just without the suction cups). They're made of flexible muscle anchored to the surface of the skull, and are also used to sense changes in temperature and movement in the water. Personally, I really like the idea.