Though we are familiar with mermaids today through mythology, there have been reported mermaid sightings since at least 1000 BC when legends of the mermaid developed in Assyria.

Sure, you can see women dressed as mermaids for entertainment purposes. You can even dress up as one for Halloween or the annual Mermaid Parade. But have you ever—aside from anything you’ve watched from Disney or the like—actually seen a mermaid?

Apparently mermaids are still on the loose today. After several sightings during the past through months in the Kiryat Yam municipality, the town council is offering a $1 million reward to any person who can prove that the mermaids actually exist.

Natti Zilberman, the city council spokesman, says, “Many people are telling us they are sure they’ve seen a mermaid and they are all independent of each other. People say it is half girl, half fish, jumping like a dolphin.” Zilberman says it is said to perform a variety of other tricks as well, before disappearing.

The sightings have all been seen in the evening at sunset, and all reports indicate that the creature as the features of a young woman or girl.

The proof, says the council, doesn’t have to be a video.  Capturing a mermaid isn’t a requirement, either—thankfully! A picture will work for the reward.

You may scoff as these sightings, but there are quite a few creatures alive today that were once thought to be mermaids. Manatees, for example, have limbs, muscular features, and are not limited to oceans; seen in everything from swamps to estuaries and rivers, they were even once called mermaids until the 19^th century!

Kind of puts a damper on your sexy-mermaid theories, right? But the mermaids of legend were not necessarily beautiful, either. While some were considered to be akin to sirens, luring sailors to their death with seductive melodies or pulling them into the bubbling brine to drown, others were considered to simply be bad luck. Some mermaids were even thought to be the size of monsters, up to 2,000 feet large. (Ahh, so there’s where the idea for Calypso’s transformation in Pirates 3 came from!)

There is also an extremely rare human condition called sirenomelia, in which a child’s legs are fused together, reducing their genitalia and making them appear to have a tail. It’s very rare, affecting 1 out of every 100,000 births—but the babies rarely survive. During the Renaissance, children with the disease were kept in “Cabinets of curiosities” for display and called mermaids.

Could real mermaids possibly exist? And if not, do you think it could be yet another unclassified species to identify? Or perhaps it’s a very talented young swimmer-acrobat wishing to grab a bit of attention. What do you think?