The Yeti identified

[mistermack]

I watched a documentary yesterday on the hunt for Bigfoot, called the Bigfoot Files, on Channel 4

They had some bits of fur that were collected about eighteen thousand feet up in the Himalayas, from two sites a thousand miles apart, and they tested them for dna.

They got a match, and believe it or not, it was a match for Polar Bear. But get this. It wasn't modern polar bear dna, it matched the dna from an ancestral polar bear, dated at about 40,000 years ago.

My instincts tell me someone has gone mental. But the guy that did the matching is a famous professor, with a reputation.
It still seems all wrong though. Himalayan Brown Bears can and do stray to that sort of altitude. But it wasn't their dna. Apparently.
But the big question is, how does a separate species exist up there, never get photographed, or clearly seen by the locals, and why wouldn't it have interbred with the local Himalayan Brown Bears? And what is it eating? There must be a shortage of seals up there.

http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/cpmdf ... -episode-1

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/bigfoot-files

[klr]

Yup, a friend was telling me about this at coffee* this morning.

*Well, neither of us drink coffee, but, y'know.

Polar bears and Brown bears are very closely related, and some hybrids do occur in the wild, although they would probably not themselves be fertile.

[mistermack]

Yup, a friend was telling me about this at coffee* this morning.

*Well, neither of us drink coffee, but, y'know.

Polar bears and Brown bears are very closely related, and some hybrids do occur in the wild, although they would probably not themselves be fertile.

Yes, and there are other problems. Polar Bears have evolved to live their lives at sea-level. They rarely climb more than a few hundred feet, to hibernate. They would have the same problems of altitude sickness as I would, if they climbed up over twelve thousand feet. But of course, over many generations, they could compensate for that I guess.

But also, Polar Bears evolved from Brown Bears. A Polar Bear forty thousand years ago wouldn't be so far removed from Brown Bears as the modern ones are. So interbreeding would be more likely, and probably more successful.

But another problem is that a match to a bear that lived forty thousand years ago is highly suspicious.
Because over forty thousand years, you would expect that that animal's dna would have changed a lot.
Especially if it's gone from living at sea-level, on seals, to Himalayan elevations, living on vegetation with very little meat.

It absolutely stinks of hoax, but I can't see the sort of people who made the program taking part in a hoax.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Sykes

[klr]

Channel 4 is hardly the model of probity when it comes to these things, but you never know ...

[Audley Strange]

How about both have similar dna to proto-bears of which Kodiak, Polar and Himalayan brown bears all branched off from. Bears are damned excellent swimmers and 40k years is long enough for them to have moved across the globe without dramatically being altered by the environment.

Edited. Yes Channel 4 is... not great.

[Trinity]

Aside from these details, isn't bigfoot supposed to be an ape-like creature with human-like features especially overly large footprints? Bear paw prints bear (sorry) little resemblance to man/ape feet.

[mistermack]

Aside from these details, isn't bigfoot supposed to be an ape-like creature with human-like features especially overly large footprints? Bear paw prints bear (sorry) little resemblance to man/ape feet.

They did the comparison of ''Yeti'' prints with the footprints of a Grizzly bear, and it wasn't a bad match.
Especially where the bear had put his back foot in the print of his front one.
But none of the alleged bigfoot prints are of any real quality so it's the usual poor evidence that could mean anything.

This weeks program was about the Yeti. They do America next week.

[klr]

Also, at those altitudes, the mind starts to play tricks on you, so eyewitness reports should be taken with a pinch of salt.

[tattuchu]

The fur was probably frozen in ice and had recently thawed out because of global warming. Sorted

[mistermack]

If I had to bet money on it, I would bet that someone is hoaxing. But they seem such an unlikely bunch of people to run a hoax.

Bryan Sykes, you would think, would be beyond reproach, with his academic status and track record. But I would bet on him or someone working for him.

Why? Well, if it is a hoax, then either the bits of fur that they analysed were planted, or the results were switched.
The ancient dna that it's a match for came from a jawbone found in Norway, from memory. So they don't have any fur of that age to plant. That would appear to rule out somebody planting some 40,000 year old fur.
So it looks like, if it is a hoax, it's either Byran Sykes himself, or someone working very closely with him in his lab.
You would think, if Sykes was at all skeptical, he would be able to work out that someone had done a switch.
So that leave the finger pointing at him, himself. Which is annoyingly also hard to believe, given his status.

But really, there's only two likely options. Either there IS a descendant of ancient polar bears living a mysterious life high up in the Himalayas, that nobody can get a clear look at, or find the shit of, or photograph. Or Professor Bryan Sykes is having us on.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Also, at those altitudes, the mind starts to play tricks on you, so eyewitness reports should be taken with a pinch of salt oxygen.

Fixed.

[mistermack]

The fur was probably frozen in ice and had recently thawed out because of global warming. Sorted

I'll have to watch it again. I thought I saw them collecting the sample from a tree, where something had rubbed against it, but my memory isn't too clear on that.

[tattuchu]

The fur was probably frozen in ice and had recently thawed out because of global warming. Sorted

I'll have to watch it again. I thought I saw them collecting the sample from a tree, where something had rubbed against it, but my memory isn't to clear on that.

I was just bustin yer chops because I know global warming is your thing
But I did honestly wonder if this might be the case. It would seem like a reasonable explanation, global warming or no. Though of course there have been cases of animals thought to be long since extinct turning up unexpectedly. That crazy fish, for instance,found off the coast of Madagascar (whose name escapes me at the moment).

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

Yeti. Yyye-tee.
I like that word.

[mistermack]

I was just bustin yer chops because I know global warming is your thing
But I did honestly wonder if this might be the case. It would seem like a reasonable explanation, global warming or no.

Ah, you need to do better than that. I don't dispute the claimed warming, or the retreat of glaciers. They found that ice-man in the Alps, when he melted out of a glacier, and they have measured and recorded the retreat of glaciers.
I just dispute the link to CO2 as the cause.

I've watched a bit more of that documentary, and one hair sample was taken from a stuffed animal, in Ladakh, in the far western end of the Himalayas. The circumstances were a bit suspicious. The european who took the sample from the stuffed animal, was a Frenchman mountain climber. And he said that it was so remote, he doubted if he would find the village again.
Very dubious.
The other sample was found in a hollow tree, in Bhutan, about 800 miles east of that. It was collected on camera by a channel 4 documentary team, nowhere near a glacier, about ten years ago. They tested it then, but couldn't get a result. But they have improved techniques since then, and tested it again for this program, and got the full profile, which is a perfect match for a 40,000 year old Polar Bear jawbone from Svalbard in the Arctic.

It still absolutely reeks of hoax to me. I love a mystery, though.