Earlier this year, a documentary on mermaids aired by Animal Planet sparked controversy in the United States. Three months later, the National Ocean Service says mermaids don’t exist.

Animal Planet’s May documentary “Mermaids: The Body Found” debated the existence of sea creatures half fish half human. Many viewers were drawn in by the controversial documentary and got them so confused the US government scientific agency received numerous requests on the subject. In an online article the National Ocean Service (NOAA) answered saying mermaids are not real.

“No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found” reads NOAA’s statement. The agency refers to mermaids as “legendary sea creatures chronicled in maritime cultures since time immemorial”. The online article on the NOAA governmental agency’s website reads that it’s up to historians, philosophers and anthropologists to explain why mermaids “occupy the collective unconscious of nearly all seafaring people”.

In a statement for BBC, spokeswoman Carol Kavanagh for NOAA said the article in focus was based on the research of public sources, given that the governmental agency doesn’t “have a mermaid science program”.

NOAA’s article dismissing the existence of mermaids was put under the ocean facts category and it’s a straightforward attempt to answer the requests from all the Animal Planet confused viewers. In the end, although pretty realistic, the documentary on Animal Planet was about a mythological creature. 

But NOAA isn’t the first U.S. governmental agency to make such a bizarre statement. Over the past years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued warnings and recommendations in case of a zombine attack. Obviously it was more of a joke and an attempt to raise awareness for what to do in case of natural disasters. 

It was only recently that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the U.S. public zombies don’t exist. As the entire America was shocked by Rudy Eugene’s attack on a homeless man in Miami, headlines about a zombie apocalypse soon went viral.

In only a few days more and more zombie like cases surface in the media, prompting U.S. officials to take a stand. Still, Dr. Ali Khan, the CDC director said: “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack.”