A new collaboration between Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology will use the latest genetic techniques to investigate organic remains that some have claimed belong to the “Yeti” and other “lost” hominid species.
The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project invites institutions and individuals with collections of cryptozoological material (cryptozoology: the search for animals whose existence is not proven) to submit details of the samples they hold, and then on request submit the samples themselves, particularly hair shafts, for rigorous genetic analysis.
The University of Oxford release said that ever since Eric Shipton’s 1951 Everest expedition returned with photographs of giant footprints in the snow there has been speculation that the Himalayas may be home to large creatures “unknown to science”.
Since then, there have been many eye-witness reports of such creatures from several remote regions of the world. They are variously known as the “yeti” or “migoi” in the Himalaya, “bigfoot” or “sasquatch” in America, “almasty” in the Caucasus mountains and “orang pendek” in Sumatra, as well as by other names.
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‘Stress makes men social animals’
Washington: It’s often said that when stress strikes, women turn to their social ties for support and men become aggressive. But a new research has now found that these gender stereotypes don’t always hold true.
In fact, stress-hit men are more likely to trust others, behave in a trustworthy manner and to share resources, the researchers found. “Apparently men also show social approach behaviour as a direct consequence of stress,” study researcher Bernadette von Dawans of the University of Freiburg in Germany said. The researchers recruited 67 male students from the University of Zurich to test their responses to stress.
About half of them were put under stress by speaking in publich and by having to complete a tough mental-math test. — PTI