Yowiehunters Forum

Like Every month, The Yowie Times will be emailed out on the 7th. If you would like to Subscribe or have had an Encounter or Sighting and would like to tell your story please email [email protected]

PS: I'm also looking for pictures for the Readers Snapshot page. If you have a picture and would like it posted on The Yowie Times, Please emails the picture along with the details of where it was taken Thanks.

Also forgot any Yowie Evidence you have found IE: Footprints or Tree Bites, Tree Breaks or anything that could be Yowie Related Thanks.

The September Issue of The Yowie Times is due out on the 7th. There is a new article called (Shootin The Tube). I'm sure it will be well received like all the other articles. Plus if you would like to answer the Research Profile Of The Month questions for next months issue, email me at [email protected] (you can use your avatar name from on here if you like or your real name) Also if anyone has any Yowie evidence, IE: footprints, tree break or tree bites or anything that may be Yowie related please email me as well. Plus always looking for pictures for Reader's Snapshot (Pictures taken while you're out Yowie Researching) May it be a great lookout or showing yourself walking the trails your researching.

Thanks.

Looking forward to reading it.

Can't wait Zed

Just two more says until the September Issue is released.
Currently doing the final edit today. This Issue I'm sure the Subscribers will love.

I quite liked the Sept Issue, thanks Dan.

Of particular interest were the 2 Russian videos that you gave links to. I have seen them before but always good to see these things again. Despite the distance to the creature and the tree cover, the one in the forest is one of the most convincing videos I have ever seen. The size and speed of the animal is astonishing. Pity that the poor audio and silly music made much of the speech unclear. However, I did get a laugh because the little boy clearly said "Chuchila!". Chuchila is any small cuddly, furry thing like a kitten or puppy...which this thing certainly was not! The man (father??) can be heard saying "On pabegaet!" which translates as "he is running!" We might instead say "Look at him run!"

The video in the snow was also interesting for different reasons. It was filmed near Kemerovo, which does have a history of sightings. (My wife's late uncle lived there but I did not get to visit him there.) I was near there in June. Beautiful area.

Again, poor audio meant I couldn't understand much except one boy repeatedly says "Potihonko", which means "to go quietly", which is understandable. Right at the end, when they turn and run in panic, the boy with the camera is yelling "I am the last and I will get eaten first!" (I cannot be sure but he seems to be laughing as he says it so maybe he was not so worried.)
The odd thing I found was that if you scroll through very slowly, at 2:33 there seems to be no creature in sight (unless it is hunched down low). Suddenly at 2:34 there it is; standing in full view. Not sure what to make of this....has the video been tampered with or was the animal just extremely fast or maybe something else?

Again, well done with the Yowie Times.

Cheers,

Mad Academic

Great reading!

I liked the discussion about Hominins - it's a great way to put forward the concept of Yowies to anyone not familiar with the idea. I also agree that we may not be dealing with a human relative, but a case of convergent evolution. As you say, the DNA evidence is the only thing that can determine this.

The other issue with finding hair samples, etc, is being able to find genetic markers that distinguish Yowies from humans. If human beings and chimpanzees share 98.5% of the same DNA, how do we distinguish what may be an actual Yowie hair sample from a human 'contaminant' hair sample if they're even closer to us still?

If the Yowie, not the chimpanzee, is our closest living relative then any DNA sample would have to be almost indistinguishable from a human sample to anyone analysing it in a laboratory. If they don't know what differences they're looking for, and Yowie DNA is 99.9% the same as ours (for example), wouldn't it be easy to miss that? That's my chief concern with any DNA analysis; making sure that anything dismissed as human hair isn't from something that's 'as good as human' based purely on DNA evidence.

[quote="Simon M"]Great reading!

I liked the discussion about Hominins - it's a great way to put forward the concept of Yowies to anyone not familiar with the idea. I also agree that we may not be dealing with a human relative, but a case of convergent evolution. As you say, the DNA evidence is the only thing that can determine this.

The other issue with finding hair samples, etc, is being able to find genetic markers that distinguish Yowies from humans. If human beings and chimpanzees share 98.5% of the same DNA, how do we distinguish what may be an actual Yowie hair sample from a human 'contaminant' hair sample if they're even closer to us still?

If the Yowie, not the chimpanzee, is our closest living relative then any DNA sample would have to be almost indistinguishable from a human sample to anyone analysing it in a laboratory. If they don't know what differences they're looking for, and Yowie DNA is 99.9% the same as ours (for example), wouldn't it be easy to miss that? That's my chief concern with any DNA analysis; making sure that anything dismissed as human hair isn't from something that's 'as good as human' based purely on DNA evidence.[/qthis

What a Great Post Simon. I'm going to copy this and send it to Harry our Hominin article writer and ask if he can answer these questions.

If the Yowie, not the chimpanzee, is our closest living relative then any DNA sample would have to be almost indistinguishable from a human sample to anyone analysing it in a laboratory. If they don't know what differences they're looking for, and Yowie DNA is 99.9% the same as ours (for example), wouldn't it be easy to miss that? That's my chief concern with any DNA analysis; making sure that anything dismissed as human hair isn't from something that's 'as good as human' based purely on DNA evidence.[/qthis

What a Great Post Simon. I'm going to copy this and send it to Harry our Hominin article writer and ask if he can answer these questions.[/quote]

I'll attempt to answer this question. (I can't seem to get the cursor outside the quote box, but anyway...)
Firstly, it is rather a simplification to say that the DNA of human and chimp is 98.5% identical (or words to that effect).
Whilst there are similarities there are also a lot of differences and it would be relatively easy to distinguish between the two.

Perhaps I should put it a different way....forensic DNA can easily, easily tell the difference between 2 DNA samples. This evidence can stand up in a court and convict one person and allow another to be freed. These 2 people may be much, much closer in terms of relatedness (for example, brothers) than any person and a chimpanzee could ever be.

So I see no problem at all in differentiating between the DNA of a human and a yowie (if only we can get some!

Mad Academic

Mad Academic wrote:If the Yowie, not the chimpanzee, is our closest living relative then any DNA sample would have to be almost indistinguishable from a human sample to anyone analysing it in a laboratory. If they don't know what differences they're looking for, and Yowie DNA is 99.9% the same as ours (for example), wouldn't it be easy to miss that? That's my chief concern with any DNA analysis; making sure that anything dismissed as human hair isn't from something that's 'as good as human' based purely on DNA evidence.[/qthis

What a Great Post Simon. I'm going to copy this and send it to Harry our Hominin article writer and ask if he can answer these questions.

I'll attempt to answer this question. (I can't seem to get the cursor outside the quote box, but anyway...)
Firstly, it is rather a simplification to say that the DNA of human and chimp is 98.5% identical (or words to that effect).
Whilst there are similarities there are also a lot of differences and it would be relatively easy to distinguish between the two.

Perhaps I should put it a different way....forensic DNA can easily, easily tell the difference between 2 DNA samples. This evidence can stand up in a court and convict one person and allow another to be freed. These 2 people may be much, much closer in terms of relatedness (for example, brothers) than any person and a chimpanzee could ever be.

So I see no problem at all in differentiating between the DNA of a human and a yowie (if only we can get some!

Mad Academic[/quote]



Very nicely said, mate.

This is what Harry our Hominin article writer, wrote back.

Hi Dan.


A good point but with a very complex answer.

When it is said that we and Chimpanzees share a figure like 98.5% of our DNA what they are referring to is 98.5 of the gene sequences that we share. If we were to compare the total 3 billion long DNA on a base by base basis, then the figure is much less. You will also see now and then a statement that we share a “certain percentage” of our DNA with much more distant animals. This is just a reflection of evolution and that similar biological processes have retained similar “blueprints” as life on Earth evolved. Personally I think it confuses the issue and is over simplistic.

Genes actually make up only a small percentage of the total DNA in living organisms so far as we understand it and figures like 98.5% can confuse. Genetics is an infant science and in reality we have only a limited knowledge of what is going on. Let’s pluck an example out of the air that might help a little. If we compare the genes that determine hair colour, then we might find a close match in coding between ourselves with that in Chimpanzees. This is because the genes control essentially the same thing. Where that gene coding is hiding in the chromosomes (which also vary between both species) might also be close but it can vary.

At the expense of really causing confusion I might briefly and loosely talk about cancer research. We all understand that cancer happens when our DNA changes in some way and the DNA that controls cell replication goes berserk. What that means is that we can begin to understand a particular cancer by looking for those changes in our genes that cause that. Don’t forget that we do have 3 billion bases in our DNA so the task of comparing bundles of billions of bases, even with supercomputers to do the hack work, is a massive time consuming task, especially when there might be a large group of people whose DNA they are comparing. To make it easier to target where and what has changed, they use sampling techniques to zoom in on where the changes have happened. They will sample areas in the chromsomes that they have worked out are the best places to look.

One of the actual tools they use is bead array testing and the concept is really simple. Allow me to use a simple analogy. If we wish to determine if two books are the same or different we might go to the same matching pages, then to the tenth line of text on those pages and then to the fifth letter in that line. We might do thousands or even millions of such comparisons if the book is large enough. Obviously, the bigger the sample then the better we can check Bead array testing does this for DNA but I won’t explain the detail.

All we need to understand is that if we do such testing we can determine whereabouts the differences show changes to the DNA so we can zoom in on those target areas. Each bead is carefully diesigned and manufactured to target a particular letter in a particular line on a particular page.

A similar process is used to check if you and some other person, like your grandfathers other descendants, have the same genetic markers – the same DNA letter in the same place. The more markers that match then the more likely you and that other person are related.

So, when we come to the DNA of Yowies similar techniques would apply. Firstly we can check to see if they are primates or some covergently evolved species, because all primates do share identical DNA “letters” on matching “lines and pages” of the “DNA book”. Then we can zoom in of any possible hominin similarity and then any modern human similarity.

This may help explain how they can compare Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA with us modern ( or ancient) humans. In these cases, they use techniques like this to determine that we have, say, 3% Neanderthal DNA. Same for the aboriginals having some additional Denisovan markers. Then there is the ghost DNA of other hominins which we see in Africa. We know their DNA is different on some pages but we don’t have any living hominins to compare with, so far as we can tell so far.

Despite its infancy, DNA research is uncovering some amazing information and we can have confidence that it has the answers to many riddles, if not now, certainly as time goes on..

Finding hairs is just the preliminary step. Hairs with attached follicles should yield both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA.

Finally, a few points that deserve very careful attention. There is no fooling bead array testing that targets millions of “letters”, what we call SNP’s or specific DNA bases, in a DNA sample, especially when it is developed for a particular species, like humans. A bead array test on a cancer victim is just as telling as the same testing on any other “human”. If there is cancer, then they will discover, say ( picking a figure), that it may be 99% okay and 1% different.

If we were to do such a test on a Yowie sample we should expect to find a less than 100% match to human. But if that figure is high, say 95%, then we can expect that they are closely related to us. If it showed an 89% or lower match with humans then they not as close. The lower the percentage, using a human test bead array, the less they are like us.

Has this been done? Yes. Ketchum had three parts to her study and bead array testing was one of those but most ignore it. Her study had some flaws in one of the three parts but there is NO disputing the bead array analysis.

She used an independent lab do “Whole Human Genome SNP analysis using the whole human genome (2.5 million SNPs) Illumina Bead Array platform using the Illumina iSCAN instrument. Of these, in a clear departure from the results obtained with normal human DNA, 100% of the 24 samples failed to meet the human threshold of 95% SNP performance. The results ranged from 53% to 89% SNP performance. In the top 12 performing samples, only 45 SNPs out of the 2.5 million SNPs (my underline) tested failed across all 12 samples, while simultaneously the human controls all yielded above 95% results on those SNPs.”

Think carefully about the last sentence. Be careful how you read and interpret this data. Also forget all the rubbish written about her and some aspects of her study. The bead array analysis was simply stunning and these important results were buried in all BS written about it.

Bottom line, they are very close to us but not “human”. How close they are is up for debate. We CANNOT say they are 89% like us. The figures can be misleading or misunderstood. We need more analysis, especially on the Yowie.

You cannot fake DNA analysis, especially when someone independent does the work.

Dan, I hope this addresses the question.

yowiedan wrote:This is what Harry our Hominin article writer, wrote back.

Hi Dan.


A good point but with a very complex answer.

When it is said that we and Chimpanzees share a figure like 98.5% of our DNA what they are referring to is 98.5 of the gene sequences that we share. If we were to compare the total 3 billion long DNA on a base by base basis, then the figure is much less. You will also see now and then a statement that we share a “certain percentage” of our DNA with much more distant animals. This is just a reflection of evolution and that similar biological processes have retained similar “blueprints” as life on Earth evolved. Personally I think it confuses the issue and is over simplistic.

Genes actually make up only a small percentage of the total DNA in living organisms so far as we understand it and figures like 98.5% can confuse. Genetics is an infant science and in reality we have only a limited knowledge of what is going on. Let’s pluck an example out of the air that might help a little. If we compare the genes that determine hair colour, then we might find a close match in coding between ourselves with that in Chimpanzees. This is because the genes control essentially the same thing. Where that gene coding is hiding in the chromosomes (which also vary between both species) might also be close but it can vary.

At the expense of really causing confusion I might briefly and loosely talk about cancer research. We all understand that cancer happens when our DNA changes in some way and the DNA that controls cell replication goes berserk. What that means is that we can begin to understand a particular cancer by looking for those changes in our genes that cause that. Don’t forget that we do have 3 billion bases in our DNA so the task of comparing bundles of billions of bases, even with supercomputers to do the hack work, is a massive time consuming task, especially when there might be a large group of people whose DNA they are comparing. To make it easier to target where and what has changed, they use sampling techniques to zoom in on where the changes have happened. They will sample areas in the chromsomes that they have worked out are the best places to look.

One of the actual tools they use is bead array testing and the concept is really simple. Allow me to use a simple analogy. If we wish to determine if two books are the same or different we might go to the same matching pages, then to the tenth line of text on those pages and then to the fifth letter in that line. We might do thousands or even millions of such comparisons if the book is large enough. Obviously, the bigger the sample then the better we can check Bead array testing does this for DNA but I won’t explain the detail.

All we need to understand is that if we do such testing we can determine whereabouts the differences show changes to the DNA so we can zoom in on those target areas. Each bead is carefully diesigned and manufactured to target a particular letter in a particular line on a particular page.

A similar process is used to check if you and some other person, like your grandfathers other descendants, have the same genetic markers – the same DNA letter in the same place. The more markers that match then the more likely you and that other person are related.

So, when we come to the DNA of Yowies similar techniques would apply. Firstly we can check to see if they are primates or some covergently evolved species, because all primates do share identical DNA “letters” on matching “lines and pages” of the “DNA book”. Then we can zoom in of any possible hominin similarity and then any modern human similarity.

This may help explain how they can compare Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA with us modern ( or ancient) humans. In these cases, they use techniques like this to determine that we have, say, 3% Neanderthal DNA. Same for the aboriginals having some additional Denisovan markers. Then there is the ghost DNA of other hominins which we see in Africa. We know their DNA is different on some pages but we don’t have any living hominins to compare with, so far as we can tell so far.

Despite its infancy, DNA research is uncovering some amazing information and we can have confidence that it has the answers to many riddles, if not now, certainly as time goes on..

Finding hairs is just the preliminary step. Hairs with attached follicles should yield both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA.

Finally, a few points that deserve very careful attention. There is no fooling bead array testing that targets millions of “letters”, what we call SNP’s or specific DNA bases, in a DNA sample, especially when it is developed for a particular species, like humans. A bead array test on a cancer victim is just as telling as the same testing on any other “human”. If there is cancer, then they will discover, say ( picking a figure), that it may be 99% okay and 1% different.

If we were to do such a test on a Yowie sample we should expect to find a less than 100% match to human. But if that figure is high, say 95%, then we can expect that they are closely related to us. If it showed an 89% or lower match with humans then they not as close. The lower the percentage, using a human test bead array, the less they are like us.

Has this been done? Yes. Ketchum had three parts to her study and bead array testing was one of those but most ignore it. Her study had some flaws in one of the three parts but there is NO disputing the bead array analysis.

She used an independent lab do “Whole Human Genome SNP analysis using the whole human genome (2.5 million SNPs) Illumina Bead Array platform using the Illumina iSCAN instrument. Of these, in a clear departure from the results obtained with normal human DNA, 100% of the 24 samples failed to meet the human threshold of 95% SNP performance. The results ranged from 53% to 89% SNP performance. In the top 12 performing samples, only 45 SNPs out of the 2.5 million SNPs (my underline) tested failed across all 12 samples, while simultaneously the human controls all yielded above 95% results on those SNPs.”

Think carefully about the last sentence. Be careful how you read and interpret this data. Also forget all the rubbish written about her and some aspects of her study. The bead array analysis was simply stunning and these important results were buried in all BS written about it.

Bottom line, they are very close to us but not “human”. How close they are is up for debate. We CANNOT say they are 89% like us. The figures can be misleading or misunderstood. We need more analysis, especially on the Yowie.

You cannot fake DNA analysis, especially when someone independent does the work.

Dan, I hope this addresses the question.

Hi Dan, tell Harry he is a very smart Hominin.

sensesonfire wrote:

yowiedan wrote:This is what Harry our Hominin article writer, wrote back.

Hi Dan.


A good point but with a very complex answer.

When it is said that we and Chimpanzees share a figure like 98.5% of our DNA what they are referring to is 98.5 of the gene sequences that we share. If we were to compare the total 3 billion long DNA on a base by base basis, then the figure is much less. You will also see now and then a statement that we share a “certain percentage” of our DNA with much more distant animals. This is just a reflection of evolution and that similar biological processes have retained similar “blueprints” as life on Earth evolved. Personally I think it confuses the issue and is over simplistic.

Genes actually make up only a small percentage of the total DNA in living organisms so far as we understand it and figures like 98.5% can confuse. Genetics is an infant science and in reality we have only a limited knowledge of what is going on. Let’s pluck an example out of the air that might help a little. If we compare the genes that determine hair colour, then we might find a close match in coding between ourselves with that in Chimpanzees. This is because the genes control essentially the same thing. Where that gene coding is hiding in the chromosomes (which also vary between both species) might also be close but it can vary.

At the expense of really causing confusion I might briefly and loosely talk about cancer research. We all understand that cancer happens when our DNA changes in some way and the DNA that controls cell replication goes berserk. What that means is that we can begin to understand a particular cancer by looking for those changes in our genes that cause that. Don’t forget that we do have 3 billion bases in our DNA so the task of comparing bundles of billions of bases, even with supercomputers to do the hack work, is a massive time consuming task, especially when there might be a large group of people whose DNA they are comparing. To make it easier to target where and what has changed, they use sampling techniques to zoom in on where the changes have happened. They will sample areas in the chromsomes that they have worked out are the best places to look.

One of the actual tools they use is bead array testing and the concept is really simple. Allow me to use a simple analogy. If we wish to determine if two books are the same or different we might go to the same matching pages, then to the tenth line of text on those pages and then to the fifth letter in that line. We might do thousands or even millions of such comparisons if the book is large enough. Obviously, the bigger the sample then the better we can check Bead array testing does this for DNA but I won’t explain the detail.

All we need to understand is that if we do such testing we can determine whereabouts the differences show changes to the DNA so we can zoom in on those target areas. Each bead is carefully diesigned and manufactured to target a particular letter in a particular line on a particular page.

A similar process is used to check if you and some other person, like your grandfathers other descendants, have the same genetic markers – the same DNA letter in the same place. The more markers that match then the more likely you and that other person are related.

So, when we come to the DNA of Yowies similar techniques would apply. Firstly we can check to see if they are primates or some covergently evolved species, because all primates do share identical DNA “letters” on matching “lines and pages” of the “DNA book”. Then we can zoom in of any possible hominin similarity and then any modern human similarity.

This may help explain how they can compare Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA with us modern ( or ancient) humans. In these cases, they use techniques like this to determine that we have, say, 3% Neanderthal DNA. Same for the aboriginals having some additional Denisovan markers. Then there is the ghost DNA of other hominins which we see in Africa. We know their DNA is different on some pages but we don’t have any living hominins to compare with, so far as we can tell so far.

Despite its infancy, DNA research is uncovering some amazing information and we can have confidence that it has the answers to many riddles, if not now, certainly as time goes on..

Finding hairs is just the preliminary step. Hairs with attached follicles should yield both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA.

Finally, a few points that deserve very careful attention. There is no fooling bead array testing that targets millions of “letters”, what we call SNP’s or specific DNA bases, in a DNA sample, especially when it is developed for a particular species, like humans. A bead array test on a cancer victim is just as telling as the same testing on any other “human”. If there is cancer, then they will discover, say ( picking a figure), that it may be 99% okay and 1% different.

If we were to do such a test on a Yowie sample we should expect to find a less than 100% match to human. But if that figure is high, say 95%, then we can expect that they are closely related to us. If it showed an 89% or lower match with humans then they not as close. The lower the percentage, using a human test bead array, the less they are like us.

Has this been done? Yes. Ketchum had three parts to her study and bead array testing was one of those but most ignore it. Her study had some flaws in one of the three parts but there is NO disputing the bead array analysis.

She used an independent lab do “Whole Human Genome SNP analysis using the whole human genome (2.5 million SNPs) Illumina Bead Array platform using the Illumina iSCAN instrument. Of these, in a clear departure from the results obtained with normal human DNA, 100% of the 24 samples failed to meet the human threshold of 95% SNP performance. The results ranged from 53% to 89% SNP performance. In the top 12 performing samples, only 45 SNPs out of the 2.5 million SNPs (my underline) tested failed across all 12 samples, while simultaneously the human controls all yielded above 95% results on those SNPs.”

Think carefully about the last sentence. Be careful how you read and interpret this data. Also forget all the rubbish written about her and some aspects of her study. The bead array analysis was simply stunning and these important results were buried in all BS written about it.

Bottom line, they are very close to us but not “human”. How close they are is up for debate. We CANNOT say they are 89% like us. The figures can be misleading or misunderstood. We need more analysis, especially on the Yowie.

You cannot fake DNA analysis, especially when someone independent does the work.

Dan, I hope this addresses the question.

Hi Dan, tell Harry he is a very smart Hominin.

I already have years ago.

Really enjoyed the latest yowie times. Great stuff!

Thanks to Harry and Mad Academic - that does answer my question, and the 'book' analogy is a useful one.

So it comes down to people simply not investigating any anomalous samples? Or outright ignoring findings that do identify such differences (such as Ketchum's)? That's disappointing but not surprising.

If people aren't willing to follow the evidence without prejudice then they're effectively sabotaging the only means we have of obtaining new information.

It still seems to boil down to what the people funding the research see as valuable (in a financial sense) and what they see as unprofitable (factual information for its own sake).

There will have to be some sort of 'critical mass' of knowledge reached at some point in the future, though. The more people there are asking intelligent questions, the better.

Thanks also to Yowie Dan, of course.

First of all thanks to Simon M for your compliments. If I didn't have all the guys that write the articles "The Yowie Times" wouldn't be as good as it is, so I thank
them for taking their time out each month.

So it comes down to people simply not investigating any anomalous samples? Or outright ignoring findings that do identify such differences (such as Ketchum's)? That's disappointing but not surprising.

If people aren't willing to follow the evidence without prejudice then they're effectively sabotaging the only means we have of obtaining new information.

It still seems to boil down to what the people funding the research see as valuable (in a financial sense) and what they see as unprofitable (factual information for its own sake).

There will have to be some sort of 'critical mass' of knowledge reached at some point in the future, though. The more people there are asking intelligent questions, the better.

Hi Simon,
I don't know about overseas but I am certain that in this country there would be no one in academia searching for evidence to show that "Yowies" exist. There would be amateur researchers, but they then run into the problems of who to get to examine samples and how, if the samples are interesting, to get the word out. "Funding" doesn't really come into it as no public funds would be being spent, only private money. An amateur could possibly have an article published in a scientific journal, but it would have to be very well written. So most would opt for the "popular press" to get their story out...for this they may be paid, but would also suffer the inevitable ridicule (which would not come from a journal article.)
Concerning DNA analysis from hair samples, it would be difficult to publish (IMO) because there is no "Type Specimen" to compare them to. So, if DNA was extracted and sequenced from putative Yowie hair follicles, it would be compared to DNA from known species.
So, Yowie DNA would be identified as "Non-Human, Non-Orang Utan, Non-Gorilla, ad nauseam...and eventually labelled as "Unknown Primate".
It could never be definitively named as "Yowie"...unless some already had been sequenced from a known Yowie.
So, in the absence of a body, that is as good as it gets, for now.

As for footprints, "nests", tree structures, audio recordings....forget it. They just don't rate as evidence (IMO).
Even photos and video are too easily photoshopped and manipulated with CGI these days.

FWIW,

MA