Medieval sirens and mermaids

[Linda]

Or can we say that ambiguity is in the eye of the beholder?

Could be.. how can we tell the difference?
Fact is that many people have looked into mermaid imagery in relation to this figure, while there isn't a single mermaid in the VM. So there is ambiguity, wherever it may reside.

No mermaid, but you can see how someone glancing over the shoulder of someone reading the vms might think there was one. I think the ambiguity might be in the art of the obfuscator, hiding things in plain sight by making them look like other things, while illustrating concepts that are unrelated to the quick identification, like Anaximander's tgeories of evolution.