Himalaya Hair Samples Used in Sykes’ Study
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on October 27th, 2013
25064 – Sample provided by Reinhold Messner
1. Date of sample collection: August 2012
2. Location of sample collection: Schloss Juval, Nr Merano,Tirol, Italy
3. Colour of hair sample: dark brown
4. Length of hair: c.7cm long
5. Any other hair info: thick
6. Any other supporting info: animal shot by Ernst Schafer. Clearly a bear. Species unknown. Messner refers to it as a “chemo”.
Cut from neck area of mounted head by Bryan and Messner in August 2012.
7. Result: no DNA recovered
25025 – sample provided by Christophe Hagenmuller
1. Date of sample collection: 2003
2. Location of sample collection: Ladakh, India
3. Colour of hair sample: c.50 medium orange/brown hairs
4. Length of hair: c.5cm long
5. Any other hair info: see above
6. Any other supporting info: collected by Christophe Haggenmuller from yeti mummy shot c. 1970.
7. Result: Ursus Maritimus Polar Bear (Pleistocene)
25191 – Sample provided by Channel 4 expedition. Hair from Bhutan in 2001.
1. Date of sample collection: 2001
2. Location of sample collection: Eastern Bhutan
3. Colour of hair sample: Light red/brown
4. Length of hair: 3cm from distal end of hair c.15cm long
5. Any other hair info: medium thickness
6. Any other supporting info: tip of a hair found in hollow tree in high altitude bamboo forest. Stored frozen since 2001.
7. Result: Ursus Maritimus Polar Bear (Pleistocene)
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
pretty interesting…. his data seems to show some hybrid bear species from mating ancient polar bears and brown bears?
thats pretty crazy….
could THAT really be the “yeti”?
or is there another animal?
how would that explain the north american one?
His data is very important for cryptozoology, as it appears to show that a subspecies of polar bear that is very close to the Pleistocene type has survived to the present, and obviously, not anywhere near the known Holocene range of polar bear. Fascinating stuff!
“Hair”? Bears have FUR, not hair. At least that’s what I’ve always heard. I don’t think the two are interchangeable in zoology-speak.
Right?
dconstrukt:
this won’t settle the yeti question, quick answer.
But you’d have to show me this bear to persuade me that people are thinking ape when they see bear. Same as bigfoot here; I don’t think people are seeing bears.
Meldrum might speculate the difference as: the Himalayan animal appears to be a pongid, the NA one not. Doesn’t really need to be any more connection than, say, between gorillas and orangutans.
Goodfoot:
Yes. But people get lazy sometimes. (When it comes to this: A LOT.)
Fur is made of individual hairs, I think. I might be wrong, though, I’m a literary author, not a forensics biologist.
Yep, it’s always appropriate to refer to individual strands as hairs. Fur just has different types of hair. An animal covered in “hair” only has one type.