All of these centuries of admiring and fearing mermaids and, in reality, they’re just manatees altered in the imaginations of bored and lonely sailors?
And that kraken, the terrifying sea monster described in stories as the size of a school bus with arms as big as a ship’s mast…it’s merely the distorted description of giant squid tentacles?
What will they tell us next? That the Loch Ness Monster isn’t real?
Well, that’s for you to determine when studying the new exhibit at Fernbank Museum of Natural History, “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids.”
The four-part display -- divided into sea, air, land and dragons -- explores the backgrounds of mythological creatures and cultural talismans, often explaining them from a scientific or paleontological perspective.
“We’re mainly looking at, what’s the context behind these myths? Some we’ll never know; we just put together pieces of puzzles through art and literature,” said Bobbi Hohmann, an anthropologist and curator of Fernbank’s McClatchey Collection.
In several areas in the display, which originated at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, visitors can play with interactive sets, such as turning a wheel to see how a leaping school of whales resembles the tail of a sea creature, or creating their own dragon through touch-screen technology.
But as fascinating as it is to read about the Inuit legend of Sedna, who like many entities endured a gruesome death to reach mythological status, or see the hole in an elephant skull where a trunk would connect, leading some to mistake the remnant as a Cyclops, the stars of Fernbank’s latest exhibit are its models.
“Even a child who might not yet be able to grasp the content [of the display] will find the models cool,” said Brandi Berry, director of public relations for Fernbank.
From the car-sized Barong Ket, a village guardian in Bali sporting a blond mane, mirrored headdress and bulging eyes, to the life-sized unicorn (if unicorns have a size) with its angelic horn, the creatures that decorate the exhibit are worth examination.
(Speaking of the unicorn, Hohmann noted that it’s one of the few mythic creatures that symbolizes something good.)
As visitors wind through the display, it will be easy to be distracted by the Roc bursting out of the ceiling, its talons and 20-foot wingspan fully extended. But don’t bypass the most recent addition to the mythological canon – the chupacabra.
The animal, whose name means “goat sucker” in Spanish for its alleged habit of sucking the blood of farm animals, had its first reported sighting in Puerto Rico in 1995 and has since become a pop culture figure as well, even receiving its own episode of “The X-Files” in 1997.
It’s a fitting supplement in an exhibit that nudges us to decide what we want to believe.
Exhibit preview
“Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids”
Through Aug. 14. $15, adults; $14, students and seniors; $13, children 3-12; free, children 2 and under and museum members. Fernbank Museum of Natural History, 767 Clifton Road, N.E., Atlanta. 404-929-6400, www.fernbankmuseum.org.
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