Unfortunately for those who want to believe, a new study has revealed that around 30 hair samples reportedly left by the mythical yeti are actually from bears, goats, raccoons and other ordinary animals.
Publishing their findings in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists used gene sequencing to debunk the theory that various hair samples came from the legendary Bigfoot, the AFP reported.
The research team noted that numerous Sasquatch sightings have been reported in a number of regions around the globe but said no scientific evidence has yet surfaced to support the existence of a hairy humanoid.
"On the one hand, numerous reports including eye-witness and footprint evidence, point to the existence of large unidentified primates in many regions of the world," the study authors wrote.
"On the other, no bodies or recent fossils of such creatures have ever been authenticated," they said. "Modern science has largely avoided this field."
Led by Bryan Sykes, a human geneticist at the University of Oxford, the team examined mitochondrial DNA from 29 hair samples and compared them to GenBank, a gene database that includes sequences from more than 300,000 organisms.
The hair samples found not to belong to a Yeti were likely misreported due to innocent misconception, according to Sykes.
"What happens a lot of the time is that somebody has what you might call a 'Bigfoot experience,'" he said, as quoted by National Geographic. "They hear one howling, or throwing stones at them, or something like that. Then they see a clump of hair caught in a bush, and say 'Aha, that's come from the Bigfoot.'"
Despite the disappointment for Bigfoot believers, the findings may eventually give the world a new species after all. Two hair samples that came from India and Bhutan are from an unknown creature possibly related to the polar bear or a local species interbred with brown bear, TIME reported.
"If these bears are widely distributed in the Himalayas, they may well contribute to the biological foundation of the yeti legend," the authors wrote.
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