That a form of yeti might be a bear has been in the mix for decades. We’re surprised if it turns out to be based on fact?

If someone actually shot something that to him was not a species of animal he recognized, does it matter whether it was ape, bear or antelope? No. It’s a pretty cool new find. Incredible? No. Science has been calling its myopia “frontier” ever since there has been science. Haven’t cooler heads been saying for decades that the Himalaya haven’t been adequately explored for us to think we’ve seen everything? Hunters don’t put money in their pockets or food on the table unless they know the local fauna pretty well. It’s doubtful this was an “oh well” circumstance.

In strict logical terms, the skeptical take on Sykes is the exact equivalent of me going out to the Great Plains, asking for bison hair, getting pronghorn hair from a few hundred people…and declaring the bison mythical.

On the other hand, the possible discovery of a previously unknown bear species in the Himalayas is kind of neat. Just as the discovery of a large sturgeon at the bottom of Loch Ness would be neat. Neither would explain the cryptids, but they would be significant finds.

1) We’ve got Sykes’ previous analysis of the Sun newspaper’s Siberian sample turnin’ out to be the extremely rare North American black bear Ursus Americana which was nevertheless still in existence and now we’ve got an ancient Norwegian proto polar bear turnin’ up in the form of a sample in Ladakh 40 000 years after they’re supposed to’ve gone extinct surely all underlines the dangers inherent in insisting extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof because if Sykes’d said “Prove to me Yetis exists THEN I’ll test” we wouldn’t've known only 10 years ago Sval the proto polar bear was doin’ an impression of Paddington Hits the Ashrams.

2) but when you then factor in his mate Ursus the American was acting out his own version of Shaft Goes to Siberia you have the very familiar but according to skeptics supposedly impossible scenario two rather large vertically prone species have been surviving in the wild in almost certainly tiny numbers completely undetected by modern science.

3) worse you have the possibility if only the skeptics hadn’t spent so much time try’n'o ridicule the legitmate research of others like yourself thereby warding off more mainstream researchers we might’ve been able to put in place provisions to protect two species which may well be by now really extinct.