In the 19th century, P. T. Barnum showed in his museum a taxidermal hoax called the "Fiji mermaid." Others have made similar hoaxes, which are usually made by paper-mâché or parts of dead creatures, usually monkeys and fish, stitched together too look like a mermaid. In the wake of the 2004 tsunami, pictures of Fiji "mermaids" came up on the Internet as examples of items that had washed up onto the beach, though they were no more real than Barnum's exhibit.
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