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(IWN) MANILA, PHILIPPINES Do you believe in Mermaids? If you do, you might believe Doctors at Amisola Maternity Hospital in downtown Manila have confirmed the birth of a baby Mermaid. Dr. Joseph Akino, who delivered the baby spoke at a hastily organized press conference and told reporters a baby mermaid was born at 08:37 Manila time. “The mother was a healthy human,” Dr. Akino told the standing room only gathering of reporters. “She didn’t have any signs of being a mermaid in any way shape or form.”
The mother, who is single, remains in the hospital under close observation. She has not spoken to the press yet, but friends and family have informed doctors that the mother has long claimed to have a male mermaid as a lover. “We just thought she was making up a fantasy about that because she had a hard time finding real boyfriends because she is so shy,” Brother Jose Palawan told the Manila times. “Now it looks like she was not making it up!”
According to Wikipedia, a mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria, in which the goddess Atargatis transformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally killing her human lover. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings. In other folk traditions (or sometimes within the same tradition), they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans.
Mermen are mythical male equivalents and counterparts of mermaids – legendary creatures who have the form of a male human from the waist up and are fish-like from the waist down, having scaly fish tails in place of legs. A “merboy” is a young merman.
Police and Marine Scientists are now scouring the beaches near El Nido, on the Island of Palawan where the mother lives. So far, there have been no signs of a male mermaid in the