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Mermaids are mythological beings that have captured our attention since time immemorial, with numerous legends that revolve around them and that our ancestors told in the heat of the fire.
They are creatures that live in the sea and have a hybrid physiognomy, with the body of a bird and the face of a woman. According to the legends, they attracted unsuspecting sailors with their beautiful and seductive songs, leading them to a horrible and inescapable destiny. According to tradition they were daughters of the Muses, for some of Melpomene, the one of tragedy, for others of Terpsichore, the muse of dance.
Among the heroes who faced them, two especially stand out, Ulysses and Orpheus, each one used a different strategy.
In Homer’s “Odyssey” (canto XII) we are told that Ulysses, following the instructions of the magician Circe, sealed the ears of his crew with wax to prevent them from going mad and that he himself had himself tied to a mast in order to hear them. without falling under the spell.
More curious, if possible, was the method developed by Orfeo, who challenged them to a duel of ‘acoustic waves’. With the music of his lyre he managed to eclipse the song of the sirens, thus preventing Jason and the Argonauts from going mad and throwing themselves into the sea.
the singing of the Sirens
Cory’s shearwater (Calenonectric diomedea) is one of the largest species of seabirds that inhabit our geography. Its figure is easily recognizable, it has a robust and rounded head, exhibiting a dull coloration, with grayish-brown colors in the upper areas and whitish color in the lower area, except for the outer edge of the wings, which is dark. Added to this is a yellowish beak, with a blackish end.
Although it is extremely quiet in the open sea, when it is in the breeding colonies it is very noisy, emitting gloomy and eerie guttural and mournful sounds. With these songs they notify their partner of their location, when they take turns in the care of the only egg.
To some these songs -a kind of guaña guaña- have reminded the cry of a baby, others to the moans of a woman, which could be the origin of the myth of the sirens. Moreover, perhaps some unsuspecting fisherman paid with his life when he approached his boat, in the dead of night, to the cliffs on which they nest to satiate his curiosity.
A sociable and colonial bird
The Cory’s shearwater usually arrives in the Canary Islands at the end of February and during the month of March. There, in cracks, hollows, under rocks, caves or volcanic tubes, it carries out the breeding season. It is not unusual to observe how the same cavity is shared by several pairs, even sometimes more than two hundred specimens of these birds have been counted.
At the end of May and during the first days of June, a single egg is laid, whitish in color and bulky in size. Male and female will take care and alternate in the care of it, until hatching occurs, back in the second half of July. It will still be another ninety days before the chick dares to make its first air raids.
Among their many other singularities is their longevity, they are birds that can live for more than thirty years, as well as their ability to fly glued to the waves practically without moving their wings, despite being in rough seas.
Cory’s shearwaters feed mainly on crustaceans, cephalopods and fish, which they manage, on many occasions, to submerge up to ten meters deep.
In this way, in the shearwater, mythology and biology, mythos and logos, come together once again in a unique symbiosis.
Pedro Gargantilla is an internist at El Escorial Hospital (Madrid) and the author of several popular books.
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