BBC News

British scientist 'solves' mystery of Himalayan yetis

media captionProfessor Bryan Sykes: "Yeti hairs genetically identical to polar bear"



He subjected the hairs to the most advanced tests available.



"I think this bear, which nobody has seen alive,... may still be there and may have quite a lot of polar bear in it," he said.


Prof Sykes conducted the DNA tests on hairs from two unidentified animals, one from Ladakh - in northern India on the west of the Himalayas - and the other from Bhutan, 1,285km (800 miles) further east.


image captionSuspected yeti footprints - such as these in Nepal - are regularly photographed

Prof Sykes found that he had a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago - a time when the polar bear and closely related brown bear were separating as different species.



Prof Sykes said that his results were "completely unexpected" and that more work needed to be done interpreting them.

He said that while they did not mean that "ancient polar bears are wandering around the Himalayas", there could be a sub-species of brown bear in the High Himalayas descended from an ancestor of the polar bear.

"Or it could mean there has been more recent hybridisation between the brown bear and the descendant of the ancient polar bear," he said.

In 2008 scientists in the US examined hairs given to the BBC which some had claimed were from a yeti.

The scientists concluded that in fact the hairs - obtained from the north-east Indian state of Meghalaya - belonged to a species of Himalayan goat known as a Himalayan Goral.

More on this story

  • Yeti finger mystery solved by Edinburgh scientists