The true nature of an alleged 300-year old mummified mermaid would be exposed, according to a report. Its grotesque appearance with a human face and fishtail defies any rational explanation. Mermaids are legendary creatures of myth and fables that are supposed to exist, but no real one has been captured yet.

Mermaid Caught in Shikoku Island, Japan 

For the first time, scientists will go to the nether regions of logic to answer if the mummified thing is what it is, the Sun UK reported.

Based on unverified facts, the so-called oddity would give immortality to those who eat the flesh. Measuring a foot long, it was allegedly caught in the Pacific, in the Japanese Isle of Shikoku from 1736 to 1741. The alleged mermaid is in a temple in Asakuchi City.

The mummified mermaid is described with a grimaced face, sharp teeth, two hands, hair on its head, and a brow looking human but with a fishtail, not legs.

Scientists To Prove if Mermaid is Real

It has gotten the interest of scientists from the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts, who want to prove if it is real or not, using CT Scan technology to determine the truth.

According to Hiroshi Kinoshita of the Okayama Folklore Society, who thought up the will the idea of proving something far from science logic and dabbling into the religious impact of such artifacts.

He cited a belief that people become long-lived, and legend says a woman ate part of this creature and lived eight centuries long. It was never verified through the 300-year-old mummified Mermaid mystery.

Read Also: Shark Attack Suspected Cause of Missing Surfer in Western Australia

This fantastic legend of the Yao Bikuni is kept and preserved near a temple where the thing was discovered. Kinoshita said it could be used for COVID-19 as the fold story would suggest; another aspect of the mermaid claim is that terrible disease was prophesied.

 A former owner of the half-fish mummy wrote a letter in 1903, and keeping it close to the mummy is proof there is something quasi-mystical to everything connected to the mermaid legend. Mentioned in the letter is the mer-creature was captured in a fishing net in the sea near Kochi Prefecture.

Not knowing what he caught, the fisherman sold it in Osaka as a weird fish, which his ancestor bought and kept as a treasure. But everything gets muddled, and how the Enjuin Temple in Asakuchi got it later.

The Temple priest, Kozen Kuida, encased it with a glass display about forty years back, not in a steel safe.

The Asahi Shimbun paper states that its legendary properties might help find any cure for COVID-19. But Kinoshita is more realistic about the odd creature.

Mermaid Mystery To Be Revealed

Scientist thinks it is not real but made during the Edo period from 1603 to 1867, later exported to Europe and Japan as freak shows or spectacles then, per Kanlish News.

For a long time, these legends of mermaids fueled the belief worldwide that someone gullible would believe in it.

The showman P.T. Barnum would have shown it publicly, with a monkey, torso connected to a fish body. The Japanese folkloric tales call it the ningyo.

Scientists will post the finding late in the year, which might solve the 300-year-old mummified mermaid mystery and lay it to rest after scientific inquiry.

Related Article: Dad Saved Daughter from Shark by Punching Its Face, But Girl Still Lost Her Leg and Two Fingers