Mermaid body found: Although the “documentary” you watched last night aired on Animal Planet, it wasn’t real. I know that’s a little confusing for some folks to grasp, especially since the program appeared on a network that usually devotes itself to facts rather than fiction. As a result, people have been searching frantically for the truth behind these tall tales, prompting “mermaid body found” to rise to the top of the trends once again.

In fact, as a response to the original airing of this perplexing documentary, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement declaring that mermaids do not exist. Well, as far as they know, anyway. The study seemed to be a direct response to the Animal Planet’s program, which caused quite a bit of confusion the first time around. Now that the network is doing the summer rerun shuffle, people have once again mistaken the show as something legit.

Here’s the “plot” for the documentary, straight from Wikipedia:

Two former National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration scientists, after investigating mass stranding of whales, claim to have recorded mysterious underwater noises coming from an unknown source. This sound resembled a sound previously recorded in 1997, called the “bloop”. They recovered 30% of the remains of an unknown creature from inside a great white shark which was said to possess attributes of the human body. They alleged that the marine creature had hands, not fins, and the hip structure of an upright animal. These findings, along with many others led the team to determine that this unknown animal was very closely related to humans — a mermaid.

To reiterate: “Mermaids: The Body Found” is not a real documentary. What you’re seeing are CGI images crafted on a computer, nothing more. The idea behind the program was to give viewers an idea of what mermaids would look like if they were, in fact, real. So stop freaking out and quit believing everything you see or hear on television. Chances are, someone is just messing with your head, kind of like the video embedded below. By the way: It’s fake.

If you’re curious to see what all of the fuss is about, take a look at the video embedded below. Someone in their infinite wisdom thought it would be a good idea to upload a subtitled version of the documentary onto YouTube, so it’s probably only a matter of time before it gets yanked. However, if you don’t mind terrible picture quality and wonky sound, by all means, have a look. It’ll give you an idea of what people are talking about.