The Fiji Mermaid

P.T. Barnum displayed a real, physical "mermaid" to paying crowds in 1842 — sewn together from a monkey's torso and a fish's tail, and he knew it the entire time.

The Fiji Mermaid was a famous sideshow exhibit displayed by showman P.T. Barnum beginning in 1842, presented to the public as a genuine preserved mermaid specimen. It was, in fact, a manufactured hoax combining the upper body of a taxidermied monkey with the lower body of a fish, a deliberate deception Barnum himself orchestrated as pure commercial entertainment.

✕debunked

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Quick facts

→P.T. Barnum began exhibiting the "Fiji Mermaid" in New York in 1842, generating enormous public curiosity and box office success.
→The object was physically constructed by combining the torso and head of a juvenile monkey with the tail of a fish, sewn and preserved together.
→Barnum used an extensive publicity campaign, including planted newspaper letters from a fictitious naturalist, to build public anticipation before revealing the actual exhibit.
→This specific type of manufactured curiosity, combining animal parts to create a fabricated creature, was a known craft practiced in parts of Japan, where similar objects were sometimes created for religious or curiosity purposes independent of Barnum's later commercial use.

Entities on file

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Fiji Mermaid (artwork)

Manufactured hoax exhibit displayed by P.T. Barnum beginning in 1842, combining a monkey's torso with a fish's tail.

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P.T. Barnum (person)

American showman who exhibited the Fiji Mermaid hoax beginning in 1842 as deliberate commercial entertainment.

→ exhibited as a deliberate hoax → Fiji Mermaid✓documented

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