Yeti vs Bear DNA

[MIB]

6 hours ago, norseman said:

Yes, but does anyone get tired of the samples coming back as mundane animals!?

 

Yes.   However ... I'm not letting that interfere with an opportunity to observe and learn.    There are lessons in that.

 

First, there is way too much wishful thinking going on.   People are spending a lot of money testing what amounts to "hail Mary" "swings for the fence" without good grounds for the confidence they're showing.

 

Second, Ketchum's was not the only flawed study, Sykes' study was just as bad.   Each of those samples that came back some common animal should have been identified as that common animal by morphology alone.   As I recall, the samples for Sykes went through Rhettman Mullis for examination first, so maybe Rhett is incompetent in that regard.  If not, Sykes KNEW he was testing common animals .. why would he do that except to sabotage the bigfoot community?    Something stinks.

 

Third ... this is more related to the original topic, bear vs yeti ... but still regarding Sykes: Sykes' reputation and expertise are specific to human DNA.   It appears that does not generalize to all mammalian DNA.   His errors regarding bears seem to originate in assumptions about humans / primates he applied and should not have.   Other experts, focused on bears or general wildlife did not make the same mistakes.

 

I can see pretty well that before I spend my hard earned, hard saved money on testing DNA samples, I have to have considerably greater basis for confidence in what I've got than people have had so far.   I have to be sure enough I can state that it is bigfoot no matter what it comes back.    Short of taking it off a body, which I really don't want to do, what's available?   Placenta, maybe?    I don't make it easy on myself, do I? 

 

MIB

[norseman]

7 minutes ago, MIB said:

 

Yes.   However ... I'm not letting that interfere with an opportunity to observe and learn.    There are lessons in that.

 

First, there is way too much wishful thinking going on.   People are spending a lot of money testing what amounts to "hail Mary" "swings for the fence" without good grounds for the confidence they're showing.

 

Second, Ketchum's was not the only flawed study, Sykes' study was just as bad.   Each of those samples that came back some common animal should have been identified as that common animal by morphology alone.   As I recall, the samples for Sykes went through Rhettman Mullis for examination first, so maybe Rhett is incompetent in that regard.  If not, Sykes KNEW he was testing common animals .. why would he do that except to sabotage the bigfoot community?    Something stinks.

 

Third ... this is more related to the original topic, bear vs yeti ... but still regarding Sykes: Sykes' reputation and expertise are specific to human DNA.   It appears that does not generalize to all mammalian DNA.   His errors regarding bears seem to originate in assumptions about humans / primates he applied and should not have.   Other experts, focused on bears or general wildlife did not make the same mistakes.

 

I can see pretty well that before I spend my hard earned, hard saved money on testing DNA samples, I have to have considerably greater basis for confidence in what I've got than people have had so far.   I have to be sure enough I can state that it is bigfoot no matter what it comes back.    Short of taking it off a body, which I really don't want to do, what's available?   Placenta, maybe?    I don't make it easy on myself, do I? 

 

MIB

 

I guess start baiting with bacon in the hopes one dies of a heart attack?

[MIB]

Just now, norseman said:

 

I guess start baiting with bacon in the hopes one dies of a heart attack?

 

With bacon, the first thing I'd catch is myself.  

[LeafTalker]

On December 1, 2017 at 5:11 PM, WSA said:

Had more than one acquaintance send me the link with the same kind of '"YOU SEE!!!" message attached. "Meh" is my response. It seems thought-stopping articles like this one are just too enticing to pass up for anyone who has limited knowledge. Well, maybe that is the point.  Doesn't take much for an incurious population to be persuaded there is nothing to see, does it?

 

When I asked my crow-serving acquaintances if the study was looking at mDNA or nDNA, I got not a glimmer of recognition from them.  Right, just give me the Cliff Notes, I don't wanna read some big boring book.  Is it any wonder?  

  

Yes! Someone who understands what's going on. Great post. 

[dmaker]

On 12/2/2017 at 9:48 PM, MIB said:

 

Yes.   However ... I'm not letting that interfere with an opportunity to observe and learn.    There are lessons in that.

 

First, there is way too much wishful thinking going on.   People are spending a lot of money testing what amounts to "hail Mary" "swings for the fence" without good grounds for the confidence they're showing.

 

Second, Ketchum's was not the only flawed study, Sykes' study was just as bad.   Each of those samples that came back some common animal should have been identified as that common animal by morphology alone.   As I recall, the samples for Sykes went through Rhettman Mullis for examination first, so maybe Rhett is incompetent in that regard.  If not, Sykes KNEW he was testing common animals .. why would he do that except to sabotage the bigfoot community?    Something stinks.

 

Third ... this is more related to the original topic, bear vs yeti ... but still regarding Sykes: Sykes' reputation and expertise are specific to human DNA.   It appears that does not generalize to all mammalian DNA.   His errors regarding bears seem to originate in assumptions about humans / primates he applied and should not have.   Other experts, focused on bears or general wildlife did not make the same mistakes.

 

I can see pretty well that before I spend my hard earned, hard saved money on testing DNA samples, I have to have considerably greater basis for confidence in what I've got than people have had so far.   I have to be sure enough I can state that it is bigfoot no matter what it comes back.    Short of taking it off a body, which I really don't want to do, what's available?   Placenta, maybe?    I don't make it easy on myself, do I? 

 

MIB

Hair or scat would do nicely as well. Placenta is a stretch.

 

[Guest DFinTx]

On 12/5/2017 at 0:02 AM, dmaker said:

Hair or scat would do nicely as well. Placenta is a stretch.

 

If the big guy is as intelligent as some claim, let's kill two birds with one stone and set out a large number of home DNA cheek swab kits... we'd also have his fingerprints dead to rights. 

 

Seriously though, it's a shame when the media reports on things they know little about, or when they report in a manner which is not objective.  Again, if the DNA tested in this case were known or suspected to be something other than Yeti, there was little point to be made by testing and publicizing those results unless there was an agenda (such as to "disprove" that Yeti exist or to gain popularity for supposedly and finally putting the question to rest, etc.)  However, the only thing proven was that they found no samples of a Yeti to test.

 

Quite the paradox, really.  It is impossible to prove that Yeti dont exist, yet it is also apparently next to impossible to prove that they do.  Stalemate.

[hiflier]

First off, welcome to the Forum. And a paradox it is, DFinTx, and the same can be said somewhat for North America's Sasquatch as well. But I look at it from another angle too. Yes, there are bears in the Himalayas. However, I've not seen anything to date that addresses those bears with regard to these. I'd be curious to see what their paws really look like. Five toes with claws like normal bears? Or not.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 8, 2017 by hiflier

[Guest DFinTx]

Thank you sir, nice to get a response from someone whose name I recognize (been reading your "Patty is Real" thread).

 

I probably should've said "stalemate until more evidence is provided" to be more accurate.  But yes, those tracks don't resemble a bear unless it had deformities (which seem doubtful to me because it would make survival in that harsh environment much more difficult).  Interesting stuff for sure.

 

At any rate,  glad to have found this forum because it's darn hard to find people to discuss this sort of thing with in my area.  I'm here to learn, and don't pretend to know much about BF or Yeti.

[hiflier]

59 minutes ago, DFinTx said:

I'm here to learn, and don't pretend to know much about BF or Yeti.

 

HAH! No worries there. There are no experts although a few around here are hot on the trail. Logic and common sense, two wise avenues, will take you as far as any one here has gone and yes, a lot to learn for sure. One chief one? Do NOT go into the woods in a monkey suit  See you around the Forum. 

[PBeaton]

I posted this recently on Incorrigible1's similar thread...

 

 

Funny how they weren't interested in the tracks.  

 

Physical evidence?

In the scientific and serious popular literature most of the debate has centered on the tracks which, whatever one makes of the sightings or the credibility of witnesses to the animal itself, undeniably exist. Skeptics usually explain these as the spoor of - conventional animals such as snow leopards, foxes, bears-or even wandering Tibetan lamas (who evidently do not mind freezing their feet)-and sometimes claim that melting has distorted their shapes into "yeti" prints. Though by now a virtual article of faith among skeptics, this last notion is a dubious one. Napier, no yeti believer, writes that "there is no real experimental basis for the belief that single footprints can become enlarged and still retain their shapes, or that discrete prints can run (or melt) together to form single large tracks."

In any case, some of the tracks are found fresh-in other words, before the elements have had a chance to act on them. Among the more impressive incidents involving tracks is one that happened in 1972 to members of the Arun Valley Wildlife Expedition, a multidisciplinary ecological survey of a deep river valley in far-eastern Nepal where many rare animals and plants live isolated and undisturbed. Its participants, including leader Edward Cronin, a zoologist, were open-minded about the yeti's possible existence and even looked for evidence in the course of their two-year effort, but this was not the main purpose of their endeavor.

On the night of December 17, Cronin and expedition physician Howard Emery, along with their Sherpa guides, camped on a depression at 12,000 feet in the ridge of Kongmaa La mountain. The next morning, when Emery awoke and stepped outside, he was startled to find footprints of a bipedal creature which had walked between the two tents sometime in the night. Nine inches long and four and three-quarters wide, perfectly preserved, the tracks showed, Cronin recorded, a "short, broad, opposable hallux, an asymmetrical arrangement of the four remaining toes, and a wide, rounded heel." They looked very much like a yeti print photographed by mountaineer Eric Shipton in 1951.

Expedition members followed the prints for some distance. The creature had come up and down the slope to the north, crossed through the camp, and proceeded over the south slope. Then it returned to the top of the ridge. Its tracks disappeared down the south slope in scrub and rock. "The slope was extremely steep," Cronin wrote, "and searching for the prints was arduous and dangerous. We realized that whatever creature had made them was far stronger than any of us."

 

Edited December 9, 2017 by PBeaton

[hiflier]

PBeaton, what I find the most curious about the prints and casts in your post as well as mine is the obvious strange configuration of the toes. It's almost as if they are designed for gripping a surface like maybe hard packed snow when climbing up a slope. They appear to be able to curl into material which would be very advantageous over such mountainous snow covered terrain. So the feet/paw could stay flat to disperse weight while the toes dug in. IMO it's a perfect adaptation for the environment in which the prints were found. A wide foot/paw with almost prehensile toes. As someone mentioned, the fore limb could have something like a thumb similar to a Panda (raccoon family) for gripping whatever it is that they eat (bamboo).

Edited December 9, 2017 by hiflier

[Patterson-Gimlin]

Thanks for sharing . I liked the article and the pictures. If the creature does exist in Nepal as reported for many years, they are obviously very rare. 

As far as I know none were discovered in the 2015 earthquake that killed 9000 or so people. 

[hiflier]

That occurred in April of that year and I've never looked to see the situation afterwards regarding any avalanches. For a country with such an enormous change in elevation (under 200 ft. all the way up to Mount Everest!) one would think there may have been at least bears lost. Since monks had (have) artifacts then unless hunted and killed I'm sure carcasses or skeletons would be found in areas with snow melt.

[Patterson-Gimlin]

That is what I would expect also. There were  avalanches and a second quake, I could not find out about animal deaths . Only humans . 

Edited December 10, 2017 by Patterson-Gimlin

[Oonjerah]

MIB: "Second, Ketchum's was not the only flawed study, Sykes' study was just as bad.   Each of those samples that came back some common animal should have been identified as that common animal by morphology alone.   As I recall, the samples for Sykes went through Rhettman Mullis for examination first, so maybe Rhett is incompetent in that regard.  If not, Sykes KNEW he was testing common animals .. why would he do that except to sabotage the bigfoot community?    Something stinks."

 

It sure does. He did OK with the Zana study. He found out yeti is a bear. But when it came to Bigfoot, he reported foolishness. A woman who thinks she has a bigfoot living under the trunk of a huge tree, and Justin Smeja. Did he talk to Dr. Meldrum or Bob Gimlin ... or anyone who has seen a bigfoot? No. ... Like you once said: Sykes likes to sell books. On a professor's pension, who wouldn't?

 

If I recall correctly, Sykes tested about 50 samples that might have been Bigfoot. Most were common animals; 1 was human. From my pov, the human probably was us, homo sap. But it could just as well be bigfoot.

 

Why would he "sabotage the bigfoot community?"

 

I have a theory on that; it's almost another topic.

 

Up until the mid-70's or so, Bigfoot was OK with us. His picture even appeared in a Washington's guide to

native flora and fauna. Folks stationed at Fort Lewis-McChord were advised not to shoot the Bigfoots.

 

But at some point, TPTB decided that we should not believe in Bigfoot. So for the last couple of decades, if there is a story on the news about Bigfoot, it will be a frivolous story, and the reporter(s) will make fun of it.  

Edited December 15, 2017 by Oonjerah