How are merchildren created?

[hufflebottom]

Will point out with this post I am pregnant and haven't slept properly lately so brain is totally buggered/having a bad baby brain day.

Watching the little mermaid with dd (she's 6 so we've watched it lots of times, and I watched it lots as a kid) who points out to me there is merchildren. I'd never noticed before.

However I'm now sitting here trying to fathom how there can be merchildren when the merpeoples tails start at their waist....

How do they have sex or have children?!

Dm (who just had a phone all from me asking the exact same question now thinks I'm even more bonkers than I already was) said that the children could be found in oysters.

I'm wondering how that is.....do the mermaids go from oyster to oyster to look for a merbaby or does a fish or something drop one off like the stork does in Dumbo....

Please help a crazy lady work this one out.

They hatch out of eggs. Like tadpoles.

True fact.

I've often wondered this.

Totally no idea why but I always thought they came from eggs.

Probably in one of the many and varied ways that fish manage to reproduce. Perhaps they're like seahorses, where the male incubates the fertilised eggs in his pouch. That could explain why there are so many more reported sightings of mermaids than mermen?

The lower structure of their body is fish - this would likely mean a similar reproductive strategy. Most fish lay a cluster of eggs, while the male fish then swim around spraying sperm into the nearby water.

It's entirely possible that merfolk don't reproduce with each other. According to myth they used to kidnap and seduce sailors and there were no records of mermen. So it seems cryptozoologically likely that they take human men into the water near their eggs and jack them off. Then drown and eat them.

Here is the answer...

I didn't think of the eggs bit........
Where would they lay them?

Gerund, that's brilliant.