Yeti (abominable snowman)
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Does the Yeti exist?
Yes, says British geneticist/ 2013
Himalayan mystery solved? The Yeti existed, finds British geneticist
Kounteya Sinha, TNN | Oct 17, 2013
LONDON: One of the greatest mysteries of the Himalayas may have finally been solved.
Genetic testing has led scientists to believe that the abominable snowman - the Yeti, actually existed but it was actually a cross between an ancient polar bear and brown bear.
Hair samples from what is believed to be that of the Yeti have been found to genetically match that of an ancient polar bear dating back 120,000 years.
Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, conducted the research.
Dr Sykes has over many years assembled substantial physical evidence, which he has subjected to the most sophisticated DNA tests available, to answer scientifically the mystery of Bigfoot.
The professor said "This is an exciting and completely unexpected result".
Dr Sykes however said the finding does not mean ancient polar bears are still wandering around the Himalayas.
"But it could mean there is a sub species of brown bear in the high Himalayas which descended from the bear that was the ancestor of the polar bear. Or it could mean there has been more recent hybridisation between the brown bear and the descendent of the ancient polar bear," Dr Sykes said.
Bone chilling stories of the horrifying Yeti have been synonymous to the Himalayas for centuries with local people and some of the world's greatest mountaineers including legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who became the first man to climb Everest without oxygen, claiming to have had a terrifying encounter with a large hairy, ape-like creature.
Himalayan folk lore is rife with tales of an elusive beast that have hardly been photographed.
Professor Sykes has collected and tested hair samples of several animals found in the Himalayas.
He tested two ancient hair samples which locals of high Himalayan villages claimed were that of the Yeti. One of the samples was that of an animal found in Ladakh (India) and the other from Bhutan, 800 miles away.
The DNA tests then compared the results to other animals' genomes stored on the GenBank database. Professor Sykes to his amazement found a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back at least 40,000 years - and probably around 120,000 years.
This has made professor Sykes believe that the most likely explanation is that the Yeti is actually a hybrid between polar bears and brown bears.
A Yeti footprint on the base of Mount Everest taken by British climber Eric Shipton sparked a global interest in the abominable snowman post 1951.
Indian Army photographs footprints/ 2019
April 30, 2019: The Times of India
From: April 30, 2019: The Times of India
Mysterious footprints of mythical beast Yeti sighted, claims Indian Army
NEW DELHI: Indian Army claimed that one of its teams spotted mysterious footprints of mythical creature "Yeti" close to Nepal's Makalu Base Camp.
During an expedition, the Mountaineering Expedition team came across mysterious marks measuring 32X15 inches, which the Army believed are of the mythical beast Yeti.
"For the first time, an Indian Army Mountaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast 'Yeti' measuring 32x15 inches close to Makalu Base Camp on 09 April 2019. This elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past," Indian Army tweeted.
Rejecting derision over its mountaineering team's claim of having found footprints of the mythical Yeti, the Army said that "evidence" about the Abominable Snowman has been "photographed and will be handed over to subject matter experts" for scientific evaluation.
The Army further added it held on to the "photographic evidence" about the Abominable Snowman for about 10 days but then decided that they matched earlier theories.
“So, we thought it prudent (to go public) to excite scientific temper and rekindle the interest," Army said.
The findings were reported from a region located on the border between Nepal and China. Makalu is among the highest mountains in the world and stands near the Makalu-Barun valley, a remote wilderness that has also been surveyed by researchers hunting for the Yeti.
Though the hunt for the mythical beast has stretched back to centuries, tales of a wild hairy beast roaming the Himalayas captured the imagination of climbers in Nepal in the 1920s, prompting many, including Sir Edmund Hillary, to go looking for the creature.
It was in the 1950s when a British explorer Eric Shipton sighted a series of abnormal footprints while he was looking for an alternate route to climb Mount Everest. Shipton's finding intensified the interest of the world in this mysterious, elusive creature.
So much so that the Nepalese government, in a hope to capture the "beast", issued a hunting license for Yeti in the 1950s.
In 2008, Japanese climbers returning from a mountain in western Nepal told Reuters they had seen footprints, which they thought belonged to the Yeti.
And although they carried long-lens cameras, video cameras and telescopes, they hadn't seen or taken any photographs of the creature.
But scientists have found little evidence of the Yeti's existence so far. In 2017, a group of international researchers studied multiple purported Yeti samples collected from across the Himalayan region and concluded they belonged to bears.
In 2008, two men in the United States said they had found the remains of a half-man, half-ape, which was eventually revealed to be a rubber gorilla suit.
Till now there have been numerous instances of people, explorers, scientists claiming to have either sighted Yeti or spotted its footprints. However, none of the claims could be verified, as of now.
