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I love ALL OF THIS SO MUCH and I also wanna put this out there:
Lobe-finned mermaids
They can have scales, arms, gills, lungs, and even sorta-hair (barbels or cirri)!!!
It makes sense, to me, but they’d probably experience HELLA uncanny vally, since they must have killed off many species that were related to them. That’s what makes them sometimes choose violence against humans. They see arms and forward facing eyes and say “wtf is that. Kill it”.
I have SO many bullet points for this and will infodump if given the chance. Help
It makes more sense for most mermaids to be fat, considering the difference in temperature. Even in tropical waters you'd make the most of the temperature with lots of muscle for speed and movement.
In cooler waters though, keeping warm (see: seals, literally any whale) needs a lot of insulation (fat/blubber). Also when youre larger you have more neutral buoyancy. If you're a deeper water mermaid having a slower metabolism can increase age (see: greenland sharks), and you need fat storage because of sparse food sources.
In this essay I will....