Monkey-mermaid: Scientists find fish bones, teeth in Japan's mysterious 'mummy'

Screengrab of the 'mummy' from a video by The Asahi Shimbun.

A small blackened mummy which resembles a monkey-mermaid hybrid has been worshipped in southern Japan’s Enjuin temple for decades, but it has been a source of mystery for priests.

The creature has fuzz on its head, teeth, five fingers on each hand, and scales that run down its back and end in a tail. While no one knew what the mummy was or how it got to the temple, scientists in Japan have recently discovered that the creature was in fact part fish or at least had parts of fish.

The mummy's lower body contained fish bones, possibly from a tail while its jaw and teeth were sourced from a carnivorous fish, researchers at the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts in Okayama Prefecture said. Parts of the upper body, such as arms, shoulders, neck and cheeks, are covered with puffer fish skin, they added.

It took the researchers a year to uncover what animal was kept under these mummified wraps amid speculation that the mummy could be a monkey, stuck together with part of a fish.

“Based on our analysis and the history of mummy creation in Japan, we can only conclude that the mermaid mummy was probably man-made,” Takafumi Kato, a paleontologist working on the project at the Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts, told VICE.

The scientists used a CT scanner to find that the mummy was actually a toy made of paper, cloth, and cotton. X-ray images showed that it lacked major skeletal bones, such as a spine, head bone, and ribs.

Using radiocarbon dating on the mummy’s scales, scientists determined it was likely made in the late 1800s.

While merfolk form a part of Japan's folklore and a dozen other mermaid mummies have been found across Japan, this is the first time one such "mummy" was closely examined by scientists.

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