In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks, and drownings. In other folk traditions, they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans.
Depictions of entities with the upper bodies of humans and the tails of fish appear in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Period onwards, on cylinder seals. These figures are usually mermen (kulullû), but mermaids do occasionally appear. The name for the mermaid figure may have been *kuliltu, meaning "fish-woman".
There are not many sources about hunting these mythical creatures, but many stories state that these creatures lure and kill humans, so many humans hunt them for their beauty or the possibility of causing a disaster.
