I had read that first two chunks of reading last week so I decided to do the third chunk of reading. It opens up with the Renaissance and how discovering the New World had influenced how the Old World saw and interacted with mermaids. Somewhere in the beginning there was a tidbit about how Old Worlders were interacting with the New World environments and how they found opossums. “Though hindsight relegates these creatures
to fantasy, other animals proved very real and just as terrifying to early modern Europeans. The female opossum, for instance, was a strange New World ‘composite creature’, combining parts from Old World animals and humans to create ‘an inorganic multiplicity’.” (page 61, ch 2) I think it really feels like grappling with the strange creatures bolstered the otherness of the mermaid. Especially given what their modern society was, and their modern ideas.

It also, weirdly enough, makes the mermaid feel more natural. When you have creatures like the opposum and maybe even the platypus (dont know if it was named in this portion specifically but it is a mishmash creature), then mermaids by proxy are natural- a mishmash creature. Funnily enough there was also a mention that Old Worlders expected to see mermaids and tritons everywhere (its early in the chapter), I thought that was really interesting. They were going off the opposum and whatever other animals they had found, or maybe perhaps their perception of the New World.