Why sirens lure sailors

Siren, in Greek mythology, a creature half bird and half woman who lured sailors to destruction by the sweetness of her song. According to Homer, there were two Sirens on an island in the western sea between Aeaea and the rocks of Scylla. Also, beware distraction of any type. Scylla represents sudden tragedy, with which we should learn to deal as well as Odysseus. And those sailors join the many victims of the Sirens in a meadow filled with skeletons.

Mermaid with gill slits on her torso. Human ontogeny has gills in utero. They close up and become various modified forms: ears, Eustachian tubes, throat, etc…. Artificial gills are unproven conceptualised devices to allow a human to be able to take in oxygen from surrounding water.

As a practical matter, therefore, it is unclear that a usable artificial gill could be created because of the large amount of oxygen a human would need extracted from the water. Human lungs are not designed to extract oxygen from water to be able to breath underwater. When you breathe in air, the air travels from your nose, down your trachea windpipe , and into your lungs.

Warm-blooded animals like whales breath air like people do because it would be hard to extract enough oxygen using gills. Humans cannot breathe underwater because our lungs do not have enough surface area to absorb enough oxygen from water, and the lining in our lungs is adapted to handle air rather than water.

Skip to content English. Why did the sirens lure sailors? Table of Contents. To share with friends. Famed and renowned for their musical voices and instrument skills, the Sirens would lure sailors off their course, drawn by the music and enchanting voices, the sailors would be so distracted, they would often crash their ships and boats on rocky coastlines.

Because of their ability to draw sailors the sirens were often associated with death, but many tales talk of how the Sirens would not kill themselves. Instead the sailors if they survived the shipwreck would often find the music of the Sirens so seductive they would be unable to leave the island, or even move, as if transfixed by the sound.

Instantly we shifted to the port to see if we could hear it too. There it was, and I thought it was pure myth. We all heard it now, and I knew straight away that the music was that of the Sirens. Many of the crew were fixed to their spot on the ship, leaning over the side to hear with more interest.