The Koyal Group Info Mag Review

Inlegend, Yeti is a huge and furry human-resembling creature also referred to asthe Abominable Snowman, but in science,Yeti is just a bear.

Nowthe question is: what kind of bear? A new study, published in the journalZooKeys, concludes that hair sample "evidence" for Yeti actuallycomes from Himalayan brown bears.

Thefinding refutes an earlier study that the hair belonged to an unknown type ofbear related to polar bears.

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At thecenter of the controversy are DNA analysis studies. Prior research,led by Bryan Sykes at the University of Oxford, determined that hairs formerlyattributed to Yeti belonged to to a mysterious bear species that may not yet beknown to science.

Sykestold Discovery News that his paper "refers to two Himalayan samplesattributed to yetis and which turned out to be related to an ancient polarbear. This may be the source of the legend in the Himalayas."

Thenew study, however, calls this possibility into question. The research, inthis case, was authored by Eliécer E. Gutiérrez of the Smithsonian Institutionand Ronald Pine at the University of Kansas.

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Gutiérrezand Pine found that genetic variation in brown bearsmakes it impossible to assign, with certainty, the samples tested by Sykes andhis co-authors to either brown bears or to polar bears.

Becauseof genetic overlap, the samples could have come from either species, butbecause brown bears occur in the Himalayas, Gutiérrez and Pine think there isno reason to believe that the samples in question came from anything other thanordinary Himalayan brown bears.

Forthe new study, Gutiérrez and Pine also examined how the gene sequences analyzedmight show the ways in which six present-day species of bears — including thepolar bear, the brown bear, and the extinct Eurasian cave bear — might be related.

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Thisopened up a new mystery, as DNA from an Asian black bear in Japan indicatedthat this bear was not closely related to the mainland members of that species.The researchers believe that this unexpected large evolutionary distancebetween the two geographic groups of the Asian black bear merits further study.

"Infact, a study looking at the genetic and morphological variability of Asianblack bear populations throughout the geographic distribution of the species isyet to be conducted, and it would surely yield exciting results,"Gutiérrez concluded.

As forYeti, believers might point out that the studies only looked at hair samples,and not the footprints, photographs, recorded sounds and other"evidence" for the Abominable Snowman.