The Big Foot has always mystified me since childhood. I've seen many documentaries too on the possibilities of it being almost human like. But all that can be put to the rest. A team of scientists have finally been able to identify the mythical beast known as the Big Foot, as well as Abominable Snowman and Yetis. DNA tests on hair samples were carried out and scientists believe the Big Foot could be a sub specie of brown bear in the High Himalayas.
Bryan Sykes a professor of human genetics at the Oxford Universty set out to collect hair samples of the "Big Foot" and to test which specie they originated from. Most sample he collected were from Western Himalaya in the Ladakh region to its eastern end, some 500 miles across in Bhutan. Prof. Sykes was able to subject the samples to the most advance DNA testing and when he compared the results to other animal genomes on the GenBank database, he got a 100% match to a sample of jawbone found in the Norwegian region of Svalbard that goes back almost 100,000 years- a time when the polar bear and closely related brown bear were separating as different species. He believes that the species are closely related since they are known to interbreed when their territories overlap.
The professor said: “This is an exciting and completely unexpected result that gave us all a surprise. There's more work to be done on interpreting the results. I don't think it means there are ancient polar bears wandering around the Himalayas. But we can speculate on what the possible explanation might be. It could mean there is a sub species of brown bear in the High Himalayas descended from the bear that was the ancestor of the polar bear. Or it could mean there has been more recent hybridisation between the brown bear and the descendent of the ancient polar bear.”
A book by the name of The Yeti Enigma: A DNA Detective Story is to be published next spring containing his reasearch on the myth of the Big Foot/ Yeti.