Mermaid Hoax Sequel To Last Year's Mermaid Hoax; Viewers Still Fooled As Animal Planet Experiences Ratings Bonanza [Video]

The recent Animal Planet special this past Sunday, Mermaids: The New Evidence,  garnered 3.6 million viewers.

But it was a mermaid hoax and not only that, it was a sequel to an earlier mermaid hoax from last year. Viewers were still tricked. 

The mermaid hoax fooled enough people after the episode aired that "mermaids" trended for a while Monday and Tuesday morning.

But Mermaids: The New Evidence was just a follow-up to last season's obvious hoax: Mermaids: The Body Found.

The mermaid hoax show was aired without any hints about it's veracity, and so viewers just assumed mermaids now existed.

Animal Planet even released a press release for their mermaid hoax, which included a line about "an interview with former NOAA scientist, Paul Robertson."

The whole cast of "Scientists" were trained actors, who in the special find evidence of mermaids in the Greenland Sea. The mermaid hoax worked wonderfully, though with millions of viewers transfixed by the "evidence" presented. 

Unlike Alien Autopsy and other mockumentary specials on television, there was no opportunity for viewers to cut through the fiction during this mermaid hoax. 

Animal Planet played along with the mermaid hoax and you would have to be watching the closing credits extra closely to see that th mermaid hoax labeled as "science fiction."

But with over 2 million species on the planet, you'd think viewers would want actual, you know, organisms.

Animal Planet's previous high for an episode was, no joke, Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real.

Now, with this newest mermaid hoax, Animal Planet has a new record high for television viewers, and it was believable for enough people that the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association) had to release a statement assuring people that no evidence of mermaids has ever been found:

"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."

The mermaid hoax continues to affirm the, just made-up adage: people will believe anything if you put it on TV and trot out a "scientist."