What do merpeople eat

Confusion sets in when people try to determine whether or not they are omnivores, carnivores, or herbivores. Since the species is half-human and half-fish, mermaids remain an enigma. Does it make sense for one to eat other sea creatures or would that be cannibalistic in nature?

However, you could also include clams, lobsters, crabs, oysters, and bottom-dwelling invertebrates as well. Their overall diet contains a high dose of protein and is rich in vitamins. You would find merfolk either hunting on their own or in packs while making use of various tools to assist in the attack. But do they hunt whenever they get hungry or is fish farming the way to go?

Do merpeople raise fish as humans do in order to eat them with ease? Odds are they never need to worry about developments like this since the ocean is filled with abundance.

What about the vegetarian mermaid? Some believe that since a part of them is half-fish, they could feel against eating their counterparts. They lack gills and only grow them when infected with Fish Fever.

As they likely lay eggs and have scales, it is unknown if they can be classified as mammals, though their similarities to humans both before and after performing the Legs Spell implies such. Mermaids have long orange scaled-tails and a matching orange-scaled tops. Their tails are covered in scales that end in a classic dolphin-shaped fluke. They also have a short dorsal fin running along the backs of their tails from their waists to a little more than halfway down their tail.

Mermen have long blue scaled-tails that ends in a fluke that differs to that of mermaids. When the Legs Spell breaks, merpeople lose their clothes they're wearing in human form which only reappear when they become human again.

Their hair keeps its natural length, but any hair-ties, headbands, hair clips or hairspray disappears, along with their clothes. When they dry, their hair returns to whatever hairdo it was in. As shown when Rikki was trapped in mermaid form due to a full moon, if any additional clothing is added to them, upon returning to human form, they vanish as opposed to being still on them; while not confirmed, its possible they will return upon another transformation or they cease to exist.

Moon Rings , as magical objects, remain even if their mermaid wearers are under the Legs Spell or not. A merperson's tail is also very strong, this is shown when Emma saves Zane Bennett by smashing in the steel door on Miss Chatham's boat , or when Nixie breaks the frozen surface of the pool in the Grotto. The transformation also occurs when merpeople are exposed to snow or ice, but since Southern merpeople never interact with snow, they will also develop Snow Rash and become feverish.

The only way to cure them is by applying dried seahorse powder onto their skin. Northern, Western, and Eastern merpeople are immune to Snow Rash. Northern merpeople born and raised in icy waters are presumably resistant to the cold since they swim in colder waters around Canada and the Arctic Circle. While the original live action show only ever shows merpeople holding their breath while underwater, the sequel has specifically stated that merpeople can breathe underwater.

Also, merpeople are shown to be able to hold their breath for more than fifteen minutes at a time if needed, with no noticeable discomfort. It is unknown how merpeople reproduce.

As mermen are banished to land when they are young and most mermaids both have not seen them for a very long time and are very scared of them, they do not seem to be required for mermaids to produce offspring, implying that it can be accomplished either through magic or unique physiology where the parent s' sex is insignificant. As mermaids are the only ones depicted as having children, it is unknown if mermen can reproduce on their own as well, with or without magic.

Young merpeople are referred to as "hatchlings", confirming that they are hatched from eggs that are most likely layed by parents, if not magically created without need for laying. Merpeople's incubation period is unknown. It is unknown what the offspring of a natural or transformed merperson and a human would be like.

In H 2 O: Mermaid Adventures , mermaids have different colored, glittering tails, different with accessories in their hair that match their tops, and silver or gold armbands on both of their arms. They can also speak non-aquatic languages such as English underwater, and communicate with sea creatures fluently without having to speak a different language. Although considered as the same creature, mermaids and mermen have different behaviors.

Mermaids are determined to learn more about their powers and master to control them, instead of gaining more. They even have Mermaid School , which teaches their young how to use their powers and using them wisely. They live in pods and are never alone, and aren't really as solitary as mermen although Lyla is considered a loner, but isn't that solitary and cooperates with the other two.

Mermaids usually travel with or hang around in groups of at least two or three other mermaids. Mermen, on the other hand, are left by their mothers to be raised on land by humans in a adoptive human family, most likely to hide from the mermaids after losing the war to them, which explains why mermaids mentioned that mermen haven't been seen for a while. Originally, both mermaids and mermen lived in groups or pods , but after the great war that happened between mermaids and mermen, mermen no longer lived in pods in the sea.

They are described as solitary and territorial. They are also described as power-hungry by the mermaids, and would do anything to obtain power. Zac does not really have this typical mermen behavior, but upon seeing the Trident for the first time, he becomes obsessed with obtaining it. He also believes that he is destined to possess it after he falls into a Moon Spell but then snaps right out of it the moment he touches the Trident for the first time.

Unfortunately, after being betrayed by the mermaids, Zac comes to see them as corrupt, trouble-making, selfish, devious, and power hungry. He doubles his efforts to get the Trident and denounces the mermaids as his enemies, vowing to claim vengeance on them for all the trouble they caused him. Later, as the mermaids make many unsuccessful attempts to strip Zac of the Trident, he even goes so far as to try take Mako from the mermaids after he mistakenly believes that they are calling in reinforcements to attack him for the Trident.

All of this causes Zac to inadvertently recreate the war between mermaids and mermen and nearly finish the job the mermen of the past began.

Mermaids who fell in love with humans were banished from their pods as it's forbidden for mermaids to fall in love with land people. Natural mermaids can have some difficulty when they obtain legs for the first time, but with a lots of practice, they will overcome this issue. For unknown reason, mermaids are also instinctively terrified of cats.

But mermaids have arms, so they could harvest plant life and capture crustaceans. If mermaid nutrition works anything like human nutrition does, we can say that mermaids have a lot of healthy options. Seaweed and certain algae are known for being packed with healthy fats like Omega-3 DHA , vitamins, minerals, and protein.

Spirulina in particular is a good candidate for mermaids. It grows easily, and many human populations have relied on it as a food source. Mesoamerican cultures, including the Aztecs, harvested it up until Spanish colonization in the 16th century. Seaweed and algae could be gathered easily, and if mermaids used ecologically sound practices that human hunters and gatherers used, the resources are highly renewable with little cultivating.

Of course, this complicates the matter of mermaid breath, but that might be why they are usually seen from afar. Another possible source of food for mermaids are crustaceans. Every child who has played in a creek knows that catching crustaceans by hand is fairly easy.

Crustaceans have no carbohydrates, but they have a lot of protein and some fat, along with vitamins and minerals. Combined with plant life, the mermaid diet does seem to match up with many of the healthiest human populations on the planet. The question then arises: why does it matter what mermaids eat? Any cryptozoologist worth their Sasquatch tattoo can tell you: if you know what a cryptid eats, you know where to look for them. Beyond the sheer love of thinking seriously about paranormal creatures, mermaid eating habits could give us a lead on where to find mermaids.

If they eat a lot of seaweed and algae, we know that they will frequent areas that have lots of these plants.

You can narrow down the search with reported sightings, and then focus on the places near those sightings where mermaid food exists in abundance.

Apart from this tactical advantage, this is the kind of question that makes cryptozoology such an interesting field. When we speculate on the features of proposed creatures, we learn a lot about biology along the way. Meanwhile, we gain an appreciation for how all life works, including our own.