An Oxford genetics professor studying the Himalayan yeti believes the creature (or at least the creature behind the myth) is a hybrid between polar bears and brown bears.
Bryan Sykes had been testing hairs from two unidentified animals (possibly yetis) when he found a 100 percent match with a 40,000-year-old polar bear sample, reports . During that ancient time period, brown bears and polar bears were thought to be separating as different species.
The hybrid bear (yeti?) “may still be there and may have quite a lot of polar bear in it,” Sykes told the . “If its behavior is different from normal bears, which is what eyewitnesses report, then I think that may well be the source of the mystery and the source of the legend.”