Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lorn mogel Bomb, and this is another classic episode
Speaker 1: of the podcast. In this one, we look at what
Speaker 1: a team of researchers found when they tested samples supposedly
Speaker 1: collected from YETI spoiler alert, it wasn't all that mysterious.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb. And you know
Speaker 1: everybody loves a good cryptid. If the classic creatures of
Speaker 1: legend and hearsay, the Luckness Monster, for example, or sasquatch
Speaker 1: are too campy for your tastes, perhaps your interest would
Speaker 1: be piqued by the grout slang, a giant snake with
Speaker 1: an elephant's head said to hang out in caves of
Speaker 1: northwestern South Africa, or the yowie, basically the bigfoot of
Speaker 1: the Australian Outback, or the mepingaree, a giant sloth like
Speaker 1: ape reportedly lurking in the Amazon rainforest on the border
Speaker 1: between Brazil and Bolivia. If your game to dive into
Speaker 1: the waters of cryptozoology, you'll be there a while because
Speaker 1: they are fathomless. Science, however, will rarely dive in there
Speaker 1: with you, but it has on occasion made an exception
Speaker 1: for the Yeti. If you were to ask, hey, are
Speaker 1: the Yeti just a bunch of bears, genetics would say yes.
Speaker 1: The Yeti, or the great white abominable snowman of the Himalayas,
Speaker 1: is one of the world's most beloved cryptids. It's a
Speaker 1: major figure in the folklore of Nepal, and hikers are
Speaker 1: constantly reporting to have seen a giant, white ape like
Speaker 1: creature stalking around the mountains. Some even claim to have
Speaker 1: brought home a piece of one of these beasts, a
Speaker 1: tuft of hair, a bone, some skin, a tooth, or
Speaker 1: some abominable dung. These Yeti souvenirs have made their way
Speaker 1: into museums and private collections over the years, and now
Speaker 1: nine of them formed the basis for a study investigating
Speaker 1: the reality behind the folk tales. The study, published in
Speaker 1: the Proceedings of the Royal Society b finds that of
Speaker 1: the alleged Yeti bits genetically sequenced by the international team
Speaker 1: of researchers, all revealed themselves to be of very commonplace origin,
Speaker 1: eight bears and a dog. There was diversity in the
Speaker 1: species of bears. One Asian black bear was represented, one
Speaker 1: Himalayan brown bear and six Tibetan brown bears. The researchers
Speaker 1: suggest that similar genetic studies should be able to help
Speaker 1: unravel other cryptid legends. Where previous genetic studies of possible
Speaker 1: cryptids looked only at mitochondrial DNA, this research team gave
Speaker 1: those cave bones and wads of hair the full works,
Speaker 1: applied PCR amplification, mitochondrial sequencing, mitochondrial genome assembly, and phylogenetic analysis.
Speaker 1: According to the researchers, this makes it the most rigorous
Speaker 1: analysis of anomalous or mythical hominid like creatures to date.
Speaker 1: The team also sequenced mitochondrial DNA of twenty three Asian
Speaker 1: bears and compared them with bears around the world. They
Speaker 1: found the Tibetan brown bear to be more closely related
Speaker 1: to American bears than they are to their neighbors, the
Speaker 1: Himalayan bear. In fact, the two species probably split along
Speaker 1: two separate evolutionary lineages around six hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: years ago during a major ice age. And just in
Speaker 1: case you were wondering who compiled the bear parts that
Speaker 1: the team used for their research, they were assembled by
Speaker 1: a twenty sixteen Animal Planet Team for a special titled
Speaker 1: YETI or Not, which explored the myths behind the monster.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article are the Yetti
Speaker 1: just a bunch of Bears? Genetics Says Yes? On HowStuffWorks
Speaker 1: dot Com written by Jesslyn Shields. Brainstuff is production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
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