Mermaids Don't Exist, NOAA Says [VIDEO]

Just in case you were confused, Disney's The Little Mermaid was not based on a true story, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cleared up with a Tuesday announcement. The report comes as drops of doubt have slowly dripped into the minds of some viewers after the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet aired a two-hour show Mermaids: The Body Found in May.

The special, which has been referred to as a mocumentary, was described by DbTechno.com as a science fiction based on some real events and scientific theory, and promises real-life events and phenomena with the story of two scientists who testify they found the remains of a never-before-identified sea creature.

The mocumentary paints a wildly convincing picture of the existence of mermaids, what they may look like, and why they've stayed hidden ... until now, a Discovery Channel press release said.

As a result the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been getting quite a few phone calls and emails asking if mermaids are actually real ever since the show premiered.

Mermaids -- those half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea -- are legendary sea creatures, the National Ocean Service said in an online statement, but they did not give conclusive proof to deny their existence, the Daily Telegraph noted.

The denial of mermaids comes at time when America is obsessed with a zombie apocalypse. It doesn't help that the CDC released what they referred to as a a tongue in cheek campaign to engage new audiences with messages of preparedness, on how to survive a zombie apocalypse.

But the CDC wanted to make sure that folks were aware that the agency did not know of a virus that would lead to corpses rising from the dead to eat those who are still alive.

CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead, a spokesperson for the agency wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.

The NOAA released this statement regarding the existence of mermaids:

The belief in mermaids may have arisen at the very dawn of our species. Magical female figures first appear in cave paintings in the late Paleolithic (Stone Age) period some 30,000 years ago, when modern humans gained dominion over the land and, presumably, began to sail the seas. Half-human creatures, called chimeras, also abound in mythology - in addition to mermaids, there were wise centaurs, wild satyrs, and frightful minotaurs, to name but a few.

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.

Footage from the mocumentary shows two young boys who were surprised by a sea creature when walking on a Washington State beach. You might not have believed that the footage below was real, but many people were convinced by the Animal Planet special that the clip is genuine.