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