What is a dugong?  Colloquially known as the “mermaid,” the dugong is a mysterious marine mammal often found in warm coastal waters.  Still puzzled?  Stop by the Gallery of NTU History to see our complete dugong skeleton, and find out.

The first scholar to study Taiwan’s dugong was Kyosuke Hirasaka, a lecturer at NTU’s predecessor, Taihoku (Taipei) Imperial University.  Besides describing the manatee-like marine mammal in journals, he once lectured on the curious-looking creature at a conference in Canada in 1933.

In one report, he speaks of receiving a letter in 1931 informing him of “a fantastic sea creature” that had been netted in Takao [Kaohsiung] Prefecture, leading to the researcher’s subsequent eagerness to obtain explicit evidence:

The personnel recovered the beast’s skull and rib bones from a rubbish dump and passed them on to a specialist who happened to be in the vicinity and who ultimately conveyed the bone’s to my laboratory on April 22.  Upon detailed inspection, I discovered the skull to have suffered damage due to the extraction of its teeth; based on the ribs, I could see its body was of bovine morphology; the remaining fetid flesh had grown maggots. Cleaning the bones, I confirmed this was in fact a dugong.

To this day, Hirasaka’s dugong bones remain preserved at NTU’s Museum of Zoology.  Visitors are welcomed to learn more about the elusive sea creature at the museum’s special exhibition.