A bizarre ‘mermaid’ that seems to be part fish, part monkey, and part reptile is being probed by scientists in a bid to unravel its mysteries.

The mummy was brought back from Japan by an American sailor and donated to the Clark County Historical Society in Springfield, Ohio, in 1906.

With a grimacing face, strange teeth, oversized claws, fish-like lower half, and downy layer of grey hair, it’s been giving museum visitors the creeps for decades.

But now its secrets could be revealed, after the so-called mermaid was X-rayed and CT scanned for the first time in an effort to decipher its true nature.

Joseph Cress, a radiologist at Northern Kentucky University, said: ‘It seems to be a hodgepodge of at least three different species externally.

A bizarre ‘mermaid’ that seems to be part fish, part monkey, and part reptile is being probed by scientists in a bid to unravel its mysteries

‘There’s the head and torso of a monkey, the hands seem to be that of an amphibian almost like an alligator, crocodile or lizard of some sort.

‘And then there’s that tail of a fish – again, species unknown.’

He added: ‘It is obviously fashioned, almost Frankensteined together – so I want to know what parts were pulled together.’

Natalie Fritz from the Clark County Historical Society said the oddity was a ‘Fiji mermaid’ – a hoax creature popularised by P.T. Barnum.

Barnum, whose life inspired the 2017 blockbuster The Greatest Showman, exhibited a similar specimen at his American Museum in New York before it burned down in 1865.

In Japan itself, some legends say mermaids grant immortality to whoever tastes their flesh.

At one temple in Asakuchi, a Fiji mermaid was actually worshipped – though it was subsequently found to be made of cloth, paper, and cotton, decorated with fish scales and animal hair.

In the US, however, such mermaids were curiosities.

‘Fiji Mermaids were a part of collections and sideshows in the late 1800s,’ said Fritz.