The United States government has assured its citizens that, much like zombies, mermaids² probably do not exist, saying in an official post: "No evidence of aquatic³ humanoids has ever been found."

美国政府向其公民保证，美人鱼在很大程度上就如僵尸一样，很可能根本不存在。一项官方声明称，“没有任何证据表明曾发现水生类人动物。”

Mermaid¹ in the Mermaid Lagoon⁴ exhibit at the Sydney Aquarium⁵." src="http://www.enread.com/upimg/allimg/120707/1_120707063901_1.jpg" width="512" height="372" />
File photo of Hannah the Mermaid in the Mermaid Lagoon exhibit at the Sydney Aquarium.
"Mermaids -- those half-human, half-fish sirens of the sea -- are legendary⁶ sea creatures," read the online statement from the National Ocean Service (NOS).

The agency, charged with responding to natural hazards（自然灾害） , received letters inquiring about the existence of the sea maidens⁷ after the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet network broadcast "Mermaids: The Body Found" in May.

The show "paints a wildly convincing picture of the existence of mermaids, what they may look like, and why they've stayed hidden... until now," a Discovery Channel press release says.

Conversely, the US government declaration offered no conclusive⁸ proof to deny the existence of mermaids.

The statement comes after another government agency, this time the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), declared there was no conclusive evidence for the existence of zombies.

The CDC had published instructional materials on how to survive a "zombie apocalypse（启示） ," in what the agency now calls "a tongue in cheek campaign to engage new audiences with messages of preparedness."

The campaign was followed by a series of cannibalistic（同类相食的） attacks in North America.

In one such attack on May 26, a 31-year-old Miami man stripped naked and chewed off most of a homeless man's face.

The Twittersphere was suddenly alive with people talking about the real and present danger of a zombie apocalypse.

The CDC was quick to respond to allegations of corpses⁹ rising from the dead to eat the living.

"CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead," a government spokesperson wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.

While zombies would be a big problem, popular folklore¹⁰（民俗学） holds that mermaids are relatively¹¹ benign¹² creatures.

But the NOS statement associated the finned¹³ friends with more threatening mythological¹⁴ beasts.

"Half-human creatures, called chimeras¹⁵, also abound¹⁶ in mythology¹⁷ -- in addition to mermaids, there were wise centaurs¹⁸, wild satyrs, and frightful¹⁹ minotaurs, to name but a few," it said.