(ORDO NEWS) — A giant figure appears from the shadows of the forest, then disappears again among the trees.
Thousands of people saw this picture out of the corner of their eye, but none of them saw the yeti or the snowman “in the face”.
Now, a data scientist named Flo Foxon has offered a simple explanation for the creature’s existence.
In his opinion, in most cases of snowman sightings in the United States and Canada, people encountered black bears walking on their hind legs.
American black bears, as a rule, walk on all fours, but sometimes climb on their hind legs if they want to see something or smell a strong smell.
In this position, they can really look frighteningly like very tall and hairy people.
This is not the first time scientists have proposed bears as a possible explanation for the existence of the yeti.
In 2005, a researcher compared data on bear populations with reports of snowman sightings in the northwestern United States.
At the same time, he then came to the conclusion that the yeti is actually a different species of animal, and not a black bear.
But a paper published in 2009 showed a high degree of overlap between black bear populations and snowman sightings.
Foxon decided to expand on previous research by examining all the places in the US and Canada where black bears and humans coexist.
The data he used to track the snowman came from the Organization of Snowman Field Researchers, which maintains a geographic database of eyewitness reports, mostly dating back to the 20th century.
The researcher then compared this information with local data on black bear density and distribution, as well as population density.
This analysis showed that snowman sightings could be explained by encounters with black bears. Yeti reports are more common in regions with more people and more bears.
This is especially true for the Pacific Northwest. But here in Texas and Florida, black bears are not so common, and reports of snowmen are quite frequent.
“Notably, the snowman has been seen in states where there are no known permanent black bear populations.
While this could be interpreted as evidence of the existence of an unknown hominid in North America, it also accounts for the misidentification of other animals (including humans),” Foxon admits.
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