The Milan’s Mermaid N. Bagnasco 1 and G. Bardelli 2 1 CICAP, Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences 2 Civic Museum of Natural History, Milan The 30 centimetre-long body of an alleged mermaid kept at the Civic Museum of Natural History in Milan has been analysed through microscopical and radiographic observations, that allowed us to determine the method of construction of this typical fake of which other specimens have been known for at least two centuries. I. INTRODUCTION FIG. 1. The ”mermaid” of the Civic Museum of Natural History of Milan. Photographed by Giorgio Bardelli. The curious and bizarre specimen was found at the beginning of the eighties in an archive of paleontological collections in the basement of the Civic Museum of Natural History. We have no information about its origins, other than the cer- tainty that it is part of a very widespread type of artefacts, generically described as of Eastern or Japanese origin, although with confused in- formation about it. One of the earliest docu- mented cases of such chimeras was in London in 1822, when the ”mermaid” of Captain Samuel Barrett Eades was shown to the public for a long time. He brought it to London after buying it in Indonesia during a trip for the company he worked for, the ”Perkins Co.” of Boston, Massachusetts[1]. This kind of artefacts got the name of ”Feejee Mermaids” after the death of Captain Eades, when with a fraudulent adver- tisement about his ”mermaid” it was exhibited in America by a showman called Phineas Tay- lor Barnum. Barnum passed it off as the prop- erty of a London naturalist at a ”famous” (but non-existent) British academic body. In 1931, on the twenty-second issue of ”Natura”, the his- torical magazine of the Civic Museum of Nat- ural History of Milan and the Italian Society of Natural Sciences, E. Ninni made the point on the ”mermaids” back then known in an arti- cle called ”Ancora sui mostri marini” (”More on sea monsters”)[2]. A few issues later the same author will publish a second article on Nature, entitled ”Altri due ’Mostri marini’ rinvenuti nel Veneto” (”Other two ’Sea Monsters’ found in the Veneto”), in which he describes a similar finding to the one kept today in Milan. Ninni reports FIG. 2. a) Photograph in the article on “Natura” in which Nanni describes the Venetian mermaid, (b) Photograph of the mermaid currently on display in Venice[3] a very accurate description of the mermaid he examined and claims that an identical specimen would have been owned by Mr. Asta, of Venice. For the characteristic elements in common be- tween the specimen examined by Ninni and the Venetian, the author assumes that the two arti- 2 facts were the work of a single artificer. Among these elements I think are peculiar and therefore significant for the attribution of the two artifacts to the same artificer the presence of a fake white beard on the chin, of hair to cover the junction area between the front and the rear and the po- sition of the anal fin, removed from the original location and placed between the dorsal fin and the caudal fin. All these characteristic features described by Ninni can be found in the ”mer- maid” preserved today in the Museum of Natural History of Venice Giancarlo Ligabue (Figure 2b) which leads me to suppose that it is one of the two described in the article on ”Natura”. How- ever, these same peculiar traits are absent in the case of Milan. For this reason I do not think that the artifact kept at the Civic Museum is one of the two described by Ninni, nor that it was created by the same person. In the book of 1957 ”Mermaids and Mastodons, a Book of Natural Unnatural History”, written by Richard Carrington, an interesting trace is provided that could lead us to our finding. The author tells that in the thirties of the nineteenth century a famous specimen of mermaid exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in London would be bought for a large sum of money by two Italian brothers[7]. Arises therefore the hypothesis that these two brothers could be Antonio and Giovanni Bat- tista Villa, naturalists and geologists who grav- itated around the Natural History Museum of Milan. The Villa brothers were also known for collecting taxidermic finds and works similar to the mermaids of the Feejee as well as numerous naturalistic specimens. These brothers donated their collection of fossils, minerals, insects and shells to the museum, which was unfortunately destroyed due to unknown causes. The mermaid could then, at first hypothesis, have arrived at the museum as part of their collection and have miraculously escaped the destruction of the lat- ter. To date I have no sources or documents to confirm or to refute this supposition, except for a further article published in the twenty-first is- sue of Nature, in which the author B. Parisi lists the four artificial monsters present at the Civic Museum. Among these, unfortunately, the mer- maid is not present[6]. Although the mystery about the history of the artefact before 1980 is not solved, from his analysis we found many in- teresting elements. II. ANALYSIS The specimen, about 31 cm long, weighs 197 grams. The body is made almost entirely of artificial materials. Most likely it is made of painted papier-mˆ ach ́ e, given the density of the material and the characteristic wrinkles visible on the lower part of the artefact, much less cured than the upper part. This difference in accuracy between the upper and lower parts is plausibly due to the purely expositive function of the ob- ject. The papier-mˆ ach ́ e has also been used in the making of other similar ”mermaids”, such as the ”Japanese Monkey-Fish” of the Horniman Museum in London[4]. On the artefact of the Civic Museum of Natural History in Milan we carried out three x-ray examinations, one from above (which I will call axial), one of the left side centred on the head and the last of left side almost integrally. Unfortunately none of the ra- diographies, kindly conducted free-of-charge by the veterinary practice Risorgimento in Milan, do contain a scan of the caudal fin. Inside, two types of internal supporting structures are vis- ible thanks to these examinations: segments of iron wire in the hands and several wooden slats. 3 In the limbs there are in fact ten segments of iron wire (Figure 3a), 5 per hand, about one millime- tre thick and between four and five centimetres long. These wire segments extend from the in- FIG. 3. Magnification of the X-rays carried out at the specimen: (a) left hand, (b) wooden insert in the neck, (c) wooden insert inside the body. side of the claws to the base of the wrists. The remarkable parallelism between the portions of wire inside the palms of the hands suggests that they are firmly embedded in a material almost invisible to X-ray radiation. There is a wooden strip inside the body that extends from the cau- dal fin to the base of the neck (Figure 3b), about twenty centimetres long. A third strip about four and a half centimetres long and with the lower terminal pointed connects the inside of the head to the neck (Figure 3c). The junction between these two parts is ex- tremely well visible in X-rays, in which it ap- pears as a slightly narrower ring at the base of the head, in the lateral X-ray examinations. With the naked eye are only visible traces of glue near this junction. A fourth strip about four and a half centimetres long is visible inside the right forearm (that of the extended arm) in the ax- ial radiography. It is therefore possible that one is also present in the left arm despite the im- age of the X-rays exams is not very clear, due to the poor sharpness of the bent arm and the very low radiodensity (the material is essentially transparent to photons of the X radiation). The only elements of the ”mermaid” of certain bi- ological source are the claws, the fins and the teeth. The claws, five by hand and five or six millimetres long, probably come from a chicken or some similar farm-raised bird. One of these claws, in the left hand (Figure 4a), is missing and reveals the tip of the wire inside. The fins, two FIG. 4. Photographs of the specimen: (a) left hand, (b) dorsal fin. ventral, one dorsal and one caudal, are authen- tic fins of dried fish in extended position. This effect can be easily achieved, for example, by keeping the tail and fins ”stretched and in good position, up to drying with cardboard pressed by iron wire springs or with pins”, as the naturalist Pietro Zangheri[5] wrote in the eighties. The dorsal fin (Figure 4b) retains a base of underlying original tissue that probably helps maintain the alignment of the spiniform rays. This detail is evident in the axial and lateral x-ray exams centred on the body, while to the naked eye it is identifiable as a slight protrusion on the back of the artifact below the fin. At the base of all the fins are visible some small traces probably of glue. The teeth are perfectly aligned and from one to two millimeters high. They are in all likelihood attributable to a fish, seen their shape, the size and the conformation of the mandibles. As the radiographic examination shows, in fact, the teeth are still inserted in the 4 original mandibular and maxillary structures, a condition that has also allowed the perfect align- ment between them. However, the two dental arches in both the jaw and maxilla have been separated to allow a greater angle between them, and thus avoid the narrow and elongated shape of these structures typical in fishes. This division FIG. 5. (a) Oral apparatus radiography, (b) oral ap- paratus, (c) magnification of the teeth. is clearly visible in X-rays examinations (Figure 5a) and to the naked eye especially between the lower arches (Figure 5c). The presence of the complete bones of the jaw and the maxilla also explains the protrusion of the false oral appara- tus. The teeth are more opaque in X-rays than the nails and fins are because they are made of a mineral substance, calcium phosphate, instead of keratin. Of very probable but not certain bi- ological origin are the hair, probably identifiable in hair of some animal. We’re conducting scan- ning electron microscopy tests to investigate this topic. The bust has eight pairs of protrusions that imitate a rib cage (Figure 6a) without, how- ever, a vertebral column, with the first and last pair of ribs less pronounced than the others. No internal structures of any kind beyond the lath in Figure 1c are evident during the X-ray examina- tion. From the eighth pair of ribs to the caudal fin the surface of the specimen becomes smooth, to simulate half of the body of a fish. Scales are drawn along the entire surface, and this drawing is not visible in X-ray exams (Figure 6b,c). The high radiodensity of these areas when subjected to X-radiation suggests the presence on the sur- face of a putty or a varnish of mineral or metallic origin, such as white lead (basic lead carbon- ate(II), ( P bCO 3 ) 2 · P b ( OH ) 2 ) or chalk (calcium sulphate dihydrate, CaSO 4 · 2( H 2 O )). This hy- pothesis has been confirmed by Marco Nervo, the Responsible for Scientific Laboratories at the Conservation and Restoration Center ”Centro Conservazione e Restauro La Venaria Reale” in Turin. However, further exams are planned to investigate further on this topic. Mainly in the front there are numerous small holes comparable to those of woodworms, which, however, were probably created on purpose to give the artifact a false sense of antiquity. Until now, in fact, I have not been able to find sources according to which the papier-mˆ ach ́ e is subject to the infesta- tion of woodworms. These holes are not visible in any X-rays, and their diameter is comparable to the diameter of the iron wire in the mermaid’s hands. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the veterinary clinic ’Risorgimento’ in Milan for the X-ray examinations. [1] Bonderson, Jan. The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History . Cornell University Press, 1999. [2] Ninni, E. Ancora sui mostri marini . (Italian) [ More on sea monsters ]. Natura: rivista men- sile di scienze naturali, Societ` a Italiana di Scienze Naturali, n º 22, 1931 [3] Venice’s mermaid photos, https://www.naturamediterraneo.com/forum/ Topic 28059 5 [4] Viscardi, Paolo. Hollinshead, Anita. MacFar- lane, Ross. Moffatt, James. Mermaids Uncov- ered . Journal of Museum Ethnography. 27. 98- 116, 2014. [5] Zangheri, Pietro. Il Naturalista. Esploratore, Raccoglitore, Preparatore, Imbalsamatore Hoepli, 1981. [6] Parisi, B. Mostri Artificiali . (Italian) [ Artificial monsters ]. Natura: rivista mensile di scienze nat- urali, Societ` a Italiana di Scienze Naturali, n º 21, 1930 [7] Carrington, Richard. Mermaids and Mastodons, a Book of Natural and Unnatural History . Rine- hart and Company, Inc., New York, 1957. [8] Bardelli Giorgio. La misteriosa “sirena” . (Ital- ian) [ The mysterious mermaid ]. Museo delle mer- aviglie: curiose rarit` a dalle collezioni del Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano. Natura, Soc. it. di Sc. nat. e Mus. civ. di St. Nat. di Milano, n ° 106 (2016), Vol. 2, p. 52