14 DAY TRIAL // This past July 1, the We (Heart) Mythical Creatures Club was dealt a heavy blow when researchers published a study showing that, for the time being at least, there is no bulletproof evidence that Bigfoot is real.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society B., details how, after analyzing several alleged Bigfoot DNA samples, scientists found that the genetic material actually came from all sorts of animals, and even humans.
Chiefly thanks to human imagination, stories about an odd human-like creature have been popping up like daisies all around the globe over the years, Live Science explains.
In North America, folks have settled on calling this creature Bigfoot. In the Himalayas, on the other hand, the mysterious and surprisingly hairy two-legged animal is referred to as the Yeti, the same source details.
Looking to sort out the mystery surrounding this man-beast's existence, geneticist Bryan Sykes with the University of Oxford in the UK, together with physiologist Rhettman Mullis and other researchers, tested several supposed Bigfoot DNA samples.
All in all, the specialists looked at 36 genetic material samples. Not at all surprisingly, none of these was found to belong to some mysterious species whose existence the scientific community is yet to become aware of and document.
On the contrary, Bryan Sykes says that the samples he and his colleagues received came from animals such as deer, cows, horses, coyotes, tapirs, and even humans. This means that, at least for now, Bigfoot's existence is yet to be confirmed by cold hard genetics.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society B., the researchers say that, interestingly enough, there were two DNA samples, i.e. one from Bhutan and one from India, that stood out from the crowd.
By the looks of it, these two DNA samples closely match the genetic profile of a Paleolithic polar bear believed to have long been extinct. Hence, the researchers believe that they might come either from an unknown bear or from a hybrid between well-documented species.
“Two Himalayan samples, one from Ladakh, India, the other from Bhutan, had their closest genetic affinity with a Palaeolithic polar bear, Ursus maritimus. Otherwise the hairs were from a range of known extant mammals,” the scientists write in the Abstract to their paper.
Genetic evidence or no genetic evidence, chances are that the world is not yet ready to give up on the idea that a peculiar human-like creature that is yet to be discovered by science has been walking the Earth for decades.