Is the Yeti Real?

If the creature lived in the American North-West, it would be called Bigfoot or Sasquatch.  But it lives in Asia, where the Tibetan and Nepalese names are prone to mistranslation into English.

The most famous of all was Metoh Kang Admi, which should have been 'male bear snow man'.  But Henry Newman, a New Stateman journalist working in Calcutta, received a garbled rendering of the Tibetan words in the first place.  

He then compounded matters by mistranslating 'metoh' as 'filthy'.  Releasing that this didn't look good in print, he substituted the word for one that was more dramatic in English. Thus the world read about the Abominable Snowman for the first time in 1921.

This wasn't the first report of the creature itself.  It was merely the start of its best known and most commonly used nickname. 

The locals themselves have several words.  It is Michê, Migoi, Meh-teh (the phonetic rendering of this is from where we got Yeti), Yeren, Dzu-teh, Mi-go, Mande Burung, Bun Manchi, Mirka, Almas, Kangmi or simply Kang Admi - snowman - depending on your country or tribe.

They all mean similar things - bear, snowman, wild man of the rocks or wild man of the mountains; and they all refer to something with an identical description from Russia to Bhutan; from India through to China.

Adult Yetis grow up to ten feet tall and their fur is black, red or brown, not the white of popular culture.  They keep to themselves, disdaining contact with humans; and they live in caves hidden behind snow-drifts.  They walk on two legs and their faces are remarkably human in aspect.

The legends are all intact; but is the Yeti real?

In 2003, an expedition funded by National Geographic set out to Bhutan to speak with eye witnesses and try to find evidence of the Yeti. 

It was a well connected trek. A member of the Bhutanese royal family accompanied them!  Which probably encouraged villagers along the way to share their stories.

It certainly gained them access to a remote and isolated Buddhist monastery, where monks claimed to hold the mummified remains of the creature.

The team examined it. It had been cut in two and stitched together, but the agonized expression was all too human. Nevertheless the condition of the pelt and the absence of a skeleton made it difficult to determine what it could have been.

A skeptic on the trip was still disturbed. If it wasn't a Yeti (and he was convinced that it couldn't be), then it was a human being.  The implications of its violent death gave him a sleepless night.

On the whole, the trip was disappointing.  A seven inch footprint was found, which matched in all dimensions plaster-casts of Yeti prints, but little else went right. Their motion triggered track cameras picked up traveling nomads, cattle and a squirrel, but no ten feet tall primate.

Then their luck changed. They met a man who worked for Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck.  He hunted the Yeti (or Migoi) in an official capacity and knew precisely where the creature's lair could be found.

A punishing climb up a mountain and into dense forest uncovered the aforementioned footprint. It also led to a gigantic cedar tree with a hollowed base. This was the place, but the Yeti wasn't home and the weather was closing in.

If they didn't hurry back to a lower elevation, then incoming snows may see them trapped up there. 

But hunting around inside the hollowed cedar tree, wildlife cameraman Ted Giffords found a sample of hair with 'a nice, plump follicle there'.  This was precisely what the team needed! 

Back in Britain, there was one more member of the team who didn't need to travel to Bhutan to play his part.  It was geneticist Professor Bryan Sykes, and he was willing and able to test that hair for all that it might reveal.

As Professor of Human Genetics at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Bryan Sykes is one of Britain's leading researchers in the field.

I've personally had my DNA tested by him! 

It was during his research into the Blood of the Isles, wherein he determined the genetic make-up of modern Britons. 

Had we intermingled into a mongrel race made up of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Romans, Normans and every other invader and immigrant?  Apparently not!  We still have our enclaves and very little of the twain will meet. 

(Incidentally, my results showed a 98% chance that I'm a Brythonic Celt.  In short, my DNA is Welsh.  No real shock there then!)

But on this occasion, he was receiving samples purported to come from a Yeti.  The hair from the cedar tree wasn't all that he was given. After sifting through all of the wild pig and goat hairs, the most promising offering had been skin. It turned out to belong to a bear.  Then he tested the hair.

"Because we were half expecting a bear - because of the analysis of the skin sample - we went directly and asked the reaction to look for bear DNA."  Prof Sykes explained on camera. "But there wasn't any there."

He and his team performed more tests.  They looked specifically for humans, bears and primates, but none were a match.  In fact, so far, it can't be identified as 'any known species'.

"It's certainly mysterious."  Prof Sykes concluded.  He also appeared dumb-founded, as if this was not the anticipated result.  It must have made an impact upon him too. 

In May 2012, Prof Sykes put out a call for any alleged Bigfoot, Sasquatch or Yeti hair.  It was part of an announcement that he was teaming up with Michel Sartori, the director of Lausanne Museum of Zoology, in Switzerland.

The academics will test all of the hair samples, in order to establish for once and for all what grew them.

Also in 2003, another team was on a different Yeti hunt across the border in Nepal. 

Led by Yoshiteru Takahashi, the Japanese group were over 25,000ft above sea level, on the Dhaulagiri IV mountain. They spotted the creature, but gained no firm evidence to show the rest of the world.

It was described as being only around 5ft tall, but walking on two legs. 

The sighting promoted Mr Takahashi to set up the Yeti Project Japan, which sought funding for more expeditions onto the same mountain.

By October 2008, they finally struck lucky again and uncovered some footprints. With the members of the party all competent hunters, they know what various tracks look like. They can identify all of the usual suspects.

But this was something different. These were eight inch long footprints, which looked disconcertingly human.  Which human being would be bare-foot in the snow, so high up?  And how big would they have to be to leave such large prints?

Yeti Project Japan are planning further trips to find out. 

It seemed that Professor Bryan Sykes wasn't the only genetics specialist bamboozled by possible Yeti samples.

On November 22nd 2010, scientific researchers working for the Shennongjia Nature Reserve, in China's Hubei province, had an announcement of their own. 

They also had a hair loaded with unknown DNA.

Local people had been seeing the Yeren for decades, before an official investigation was launched in 2009.

The Hubei Wild Man Research Association was headed by scientist Luo Baosheng. The team included archaeologist Wang Shancai from the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology. They set out with a budget that was the equivalent of $1.5m.

It was this project which yielded the hair sample.  That was described as 'thicker than human hair and thinner than horsetail hair'.

The Yeren is said to be nearly seven feet tall, with red, black or grey hair all over its body.

No further announcements have been made about this.

The most exciting recent news about Yetis came from the Kemerovo government, on October 10th 2011.  It related to an investigation into reports emanating from its desolate Siberian tundra.

An international gathering of scientists had met for a conference in the town of Tashtagol. For several days, they examined the extant evidence and talked with eye-witnesses. Then some of them set out on a two day trek into the remote Azassky cave and Karatag peak.

It was there where they collected what government officials called 'irrefutable evidence' of the existence of a Yeti in the region.

The world's press was soon abuzz with headlines screaming that scientists were '95% certain' that the Yeti was real.  They had hair samples, footprint casts and a scalp.  They had inspected a cave, where the creatures lived.

But a closer look into the stories revealed that said scientists were slightly more reserved about their conclusions. 

Professor Valery Kimeyev, who is the Professor of Archaeology at the Kemerov University, was amongst those visiting the area.  He told a news reporter, "As long as we don't find the bones of this snowman, it is pointless to talk about him. This problem has been talked about for about a hundred years, so there must be remains."

Also present was Professor Jeffrey Meldrum, the Associate Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at the University of Idaho.  He stated that no such claims were made by the delegates.

The implication has been that the Kemerovo government are attempting to drum up interest in the region for Yeti tourism.