'Yeti' Hair? Nothing So Abominable, Scientists Find

[Judi Lynn]

By Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor | November 28, 2017 07:15pm ET

The yeti, also known as the "abominable snowman," looms large in the folklore of Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet. Reported sightings of the mythic creature have persisted for centuries in the high mountains of Asia, and people who live in the region have collected hairs, bones and other samples that they claim belong to the legendary beast.

However, scientists have now examined DNA from many of these items, finding that they came from bears and dogs.

These new findings also reveal that the high peaks of the Himalayas may have helped create an evolutionarily distinct bear lineage, researchers said. [Rumor or Reality: The 10 Creatures of Cryptozoology]

In 1951, British mountaineer Eric Shipton returned from a Mount Everest expedition with photographs of giant footprints in the snow. Ever since then, fringe theories have suggested that the elusive Asian yeti may represent a humanoid creature as yet unknown to science. Speculation regarding this animal has suggested that it may be a surviving member of an extinct human lineage, such as the Neanderthals or an extinct ape like Gigantopithecus, or even an unlikely hybrid between modern humans and other primates.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/61048-yeti-hair-dna-analyzed.html?utm_source=notification

[Sneederbunk]

1. There must be some mistake.

[douglas9]

2. DNA Reveals the Yeti Is Actually a Bunch of Bears

In the fall of 2013, Charlotte Lindqvist got a call from a film company making an Animal Planet documentary about the yeti, the mythical apelike creature that roams the Himalayas. So, not the kind of thing scientists usually like to mess with. “Friends or colleagues were saying, ‘Oh, watch out. Don’t get into this whole area,’” she recalls with a laugh. But she said yes.

Lindqvist said yes because she is a geneticist who studies bears, and the rare Himalayan brown bear is one possible origin of the yeti legend. The team from Icon Films wanted to use science to investigate whether the yeti is real; Lindqvist wanted to investigate the enigmatic bears of the Himalayas.

Wild bear DNA is not easy to come by. Over the years, Lindqvist, a professor at the University at Buffalo, has built up a network of wildlife-biologist contacts in Alaska, who send her samples that have helped illuminate the evolution of polar bears. Scientists know much less about bears that live around the Himalayas. But if a film-production company was going to pay a crew to travel around the mountain range collecting possible samples of fur and bone, then she just might get a scientific project out of it, too.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/yeti-dna-sequencing/546806/