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I know they made a particular point of testing for the local bear DNA, but I don't think they mentioned the actual name.

I briefly read one of the AOL articles (unfortunately didn't take in most of the details), but some experienced mountaineer, who'd climbed Everest and so on, also reckoned that many Yetis sightings and other evidence were in fact due to bears.

Carole
 
We covered this a while back in another thread: think I might merge them...and so I did :)

Stu
 
Japanese climbers to search for Yeti

Japanese climbers to search for Yeti

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - A Japanese expedition equipped with infrared cameras will scour the Nepali Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti, or abominable snowman, the team leader says.


Yoshiteru Takahashi said he had seen footprints on Mount Dhaulagiri during trips to the world's seventh-highest mountain in the 1970s and 1990s which he believed belonged to the Yeti...

"I'll take pictures and shake hands if I meet him. But we will not capture it...The existence of that creature has to be proved."...

more...
The expedition seem to have left Saturday / Sunday.
 
Yeti: Slip of the tongue?

Yeti's 'non-existence' hard to bear

Daniel Lak
BBC correspondent in Kathmandu

A row has erupted in Nepal after a Japanese expert on Himalayan languages insisted the yeti was nothing more than a case of linguistic mistaken identity.

Dr Matako Nabuka is a researcher and mountaineer who spent 12 years in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan conducting, he says, research into the elusive abominable snowman.

Hackles began to rise in Kathmandu earlier this month when Dr Nabuka told a press conference in Tokyo yetis were not mysterious apes or hairy hominids living in the High Himalaya.

They were, quite simply, Himalayan brown bear, known in a regional Tibetan dialect as "meti", he said.

"This has spread too far," said Dr Nabuka, referring to belief in the yeti.

Many claim to have seen it, he said, but no one has proof.

The tribes of the Himalayas worship the brown bear as a deity, Dr Nabuka pointed out, and have endowed it with supernatural powers.

He said he had pictures of bear paws and other artefacts from the animal being venerated by mountain tribes people.

Linguistic dispute

But no sooner had the story hit the Nepali press than local opinion chimed in.

A letter to the editor of the Kathmandu Post headlined "Yetiquette" took Dr Nabuka to task for linguistic carelessness.

Signed by Bha Dawa, the letter says the Japanese researcher may have spent too long in the wrong mountains and had himself mixed up his words.

Both "yeti" and "meti" mean a near-mythical beast, said Mr Dawa.

Dr Nabuka has other opponents.

Dr Raj Kumar Pandey, who like the Japanese scientist researches both yetis and mountain languages, says it is not enough to blame tales of the mysterious beast of the Himalayas on words that rhyme but mean different things.

"Look at all the foreign expeditions that have seen [the yeti]," says Dr Pandey, naming British mountaineering legend, Eric Shipton, Italian super-mountaineer Reinhold Messner and the British Everest expedition leader from 1953, John Hunt.

"We have much more research to do on language and in zoology before we believe statements like this [from Dr Nabuka]."

Japanese rivalry

A very informal straw poll of mountaineers in Kathmandu carried out for BBC News Online at the city's legendary Rum Doodle Bar, a favourite hangout of climbers, found at least three people who claimed to have seen the yeti.

None wanted their names used but all denied vehemently that their claims had anything to do with the amount of locally brewed Everest beer they were drinking.

In the end, it all probably comes down to rivalry between Japanese mountain-climbers.

Dr Nabuka's press conference came just weeks after Japan's most celebrated yeti-hunter, Yoshiteru Takahashi, left his country to make "the definitive attempt" to photograph the beast.

Mr Takahashi claims to have found a yeti cave on the slopes of Dhaulagiri, the world's fifth highest mountain, in western Nepal.

His camera froze in 1994 when he tried to photograph the denizens of the cave, he said in Tokyo before leaving.

This year, he is using nine infrared cameras with motion sensitive shutters, and wrapping them up well against the Himalayan chill.

"We'll get a picture this time," he said, "and then all disbelievers will learn their lessons."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3143020.stm
 
Yeti from Russia's Vyatka

01/12/2004 09:52

Moscow explorers discovered a wigwam of a creature unknown to science in the snow-covered forest

Members of the Kosmopoisk association have returned from an expedition to Russia's Kirov Region where they searched for a bigfoot that allegedly lived in that region. Kosmopoisk leader Vadim Chernobrov says the expedition has discovered a den occupied by a mysterious giant and an underground passage dug obviously not by a human.

Ivan Konovalov has been working as a forest warden for 30 years in the Kirov Region. At first, the man did not plan to stay in that region for long, however he had an important meeting in November 1985 and changed his mind. Ivan Konovalov tells about that meeting: "It was snowing on the day when I was walking along the fir wood and suddenly heard snap of twigs. I turned around and saw an awesome creature covered with dark hair that was much taller than me. It smelt strongly. The beast leant against a pine tree and started bending it down to the ground. The tree was rather thick, but it cracked under the creature's burden. Then the creature started breaking the tree against the knee. Its hands were as thick and long as its legs. Quite of a sudden, the creature felt something and turned its "face" to me. I saw two black eyes and the impression at the bottom of the eyes deeply impressed me. I still remember the look of the eyes. Then the creature flung the tree and quickly left. But I stood thunderstruck and could not move a finger."

After that awesome meeting the forest warden was anticipating another meeting with the bigfoot. However, the man did not doubt that it was a snowman. Ivan Konovalov thinks the creature unknown to science has some mysterious capabilities resembling hypnosis.

It was only twice that he managed to come across the creature face to face. Another time Ivan Konovalov met with a she-yeti and a baby. They noticed the forest warden and ran deep into the forest emitting sounds resembling dog's barking.

Hunter Vasily Kapustin tells that he has seen numerous footprints of a snowman, but came across the creature only once. A hairy creature attacked a young elk, shouldered it and directed toward the forest. When the yeti saw the hunter it was at first confused, then looked at the man with astonishment, emitted some indistinct sound and rushed into the deep forest. Vasily Kapustin felt as if he stood for 15 minutes and then went toward his village. But when he came home it turned out he had spent about four hours in the forest! He had a headache and felt as if he had a hangover. But the hunter was an abstainer. He made an effort to get back to the place where he came across the yeti and discovered the footprints of an enormous naked foot looking very much like a human foot, but wider and bigger in fact. The snow on the site was spotted with blood of the baby elk obviously. However, it was not clear how the creature managed to escape through the deep forest and broke no branches and left practically no traces.

Vadim Chernobrov, the leader of the expedition tells that hunters are as a rule not talkative men; but they enjoy respect of the local population. Locals do believe that some strange forest creatures exist in fact. Those who have ever come across such creatures are treated as people's heroes there.

The two hunters helped the expedition to search the place. Vadim Chernobrov tells that the group set up a tent camp in a big meadow. "I had many baits that were to help us catch a yeti. On the first night the group was really very tired and did not arrange the baits. The baits remained in my tent. The group put out the fire and appointed a man on duty for the night. When we woke up early in the morning we saw a torn side of my tent as if someone attempted to get inside of the tent. My rucksack stood half a meter away from the torn side of the tent. But the man on duty was on the top of a tall pine tree clutching at branches. The guy had a hatchet, and all branches were cut under his feet. It took us much effort to take him down from the tree. He was white from terror, his hands and legs were trembling and he could hardly speak. In two hours he started crying and said he wanted to go back home. His home was far from the tent camp, however the man was so terror-stricken that he would not stay there."

On the next nights, the group chose more experienced people to be on duty. But they did not see anything scary at all. Baits laid around the tent camp brought no success. However, when members of the expedition went deep into the forest in broad daylight they discovered strange things there: trees broken so neatly as if someone chopped firewood there and incisions on trees made either with teeth or with claws.

It was only once that the expedition was actually rewarded for the persistence: the group discovered a den made of stems of trees in the middle of a forest clearing. The den of five square meters did not resemble people or animal's habitation. Vadim Chernobrov together with some members of the group walked around the den and then decided to get inside.

The floor of the den was laid out with logs and rotten leaves, the walls were strong and did not let the cold wind pass through. There was nobody inside of the den. There was some construction covered with sticks in the middle of the "room". Under the sticks, there was a hole of about one meter in diameter leading deep under the ground. The hole was highly likely very deep as a stone thrown down emitted no sound at all. The expedition decided it was an underground passage. However, the group had no special equipment to come down the passage. They just charted the site to get back to it later.

The leader of the expedition says it is now important to gather many experts, biologists, zoologists and doctors to organize another expedition to the mysterious site in the Kirov Region.

Alexey Rozanov, a correspondent member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Paleontology Institute says that yeti is one of the most mysterious puzzles of present-day science. Opinions still differ whether yeti exists or not. Some people believe there is no documented evidence proving existence of yeti; all photos and videos allegedly showing yeti are falsifications. Others say that yetis are in fact baboons, huge monkeys, and Himalayan bears about two meters tall. There is an opinion that yeti is an offshoot of the primates developing parallel to human beings. At the time when human brain and intellect developed, yeti acquired some extrasensory capabilities. Some researchers believe that people's hairy neighbors can not only hypnotize, but also levitate, become invisible or cure any diseases with a glance. There are even more fantastic hypotheses saying that yetis are wood-goblins, demons or some beings from the parallel world. Unfortunately, there is not single evidence proving any of the fantastic suggestions.

Legends about yeti go back to the antiquity; it was mentioned for the first time about 4 thousand years ago, crypt-zoologist, doctor of biological science Alexander Bayanov tells. More information about yeti appears every year. Japan mountaineers left for the Himalayas in August 2002 to search for yeti; they got back from the expedition absolutely confident that yeti actually existed. The mountaineers brought about ten pictures of yeti footprints taken on the slopes of the Dhaulakhari mountain and told they had seen an apelike creature quickly running about the mountain slopes. There is evidence provided by an American mountain-skier who came across two hairy creatures when he descended from Everest. He says the creatures were neither animals nor humans. The meeting ended like any other story connected with yeti: the creatures suddenly disappeared.

In two months, it was reported from Pakistan that a hairy creature near the settlement of Haripura attacked a 20-year-old native. The creature seized the guy's shoulder and scratched him, but when the native cried, the creature got scared and ran away. Doctors examined the guy's wounds, but could not say what the creature actually was.

A hairy very tall creature was also once seen in Russia near the cities of St.Petersburg and Tomsk. A mummified paw of some ancient animal belonging to none of the known to science species was discovered in Russia's Altai Mountains. Vice-president of the Russian Association of Vet Anatomists Yury Malafeyev took an X-ray photograph of the paw and made a conclusion that it looked very much like a human hand, but covered with red fur and of a bigger size.

http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/11754_yeti.html
 
I was paraphrasing from a book I read years ago (poss "Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World"?) which mentioned deep uninhabited valleys: I think the late Don Whillans was the interviewee

I knew Don well when I was a youngster, and once asked him about the Yeti. He didn't make any grand claims about what it was he'd seen, just that he'd seen it. He was the most down-to-earth guy you could imagine, and well-travelled enough not to mistake a bear or other similar animal.
 
..which is, of course, the most compelling kind of testimony: a professional mountaineer who wasn't there looking for yetis, but just happened to have seen one, and didn't make a song and dance about it (as opposed to a self-proclaimed yeti hunter, who was there specifically to see them and therefore may be more suggestible, consciously or otherwise).
 
Dont bear walk on all fours and yeti (and humans, but not gorrillas or Giganipithicus) on two?

I watched the Bhutan prog (wanted to see a seldom seen part of the world, and a relativley unspoilt country) copout ending IMHO.
 
carole said:
I know they made a particular point of testing for the local bear DNA, but I don't think they mentioned the actual name.

I briefly read one of the AOL articles (unfortunately didn't take in most of the details), but some experienced mountaineer, who'd climbed Everest and so on, also reckoned that many Yetis sightings and other evidence were in fact due to bears.

Carole
That would most probably have been Reinhold Messner (first European to climb Everest without extra bottled oxygen;first European to climb Everest without any bottled oxygen at all; first man to cross Antartica on foot; first man to climb the 14 tallest mountains in the world in one lifetime, etc.).

In 1986 he supposedly came upon a yeti after hearing the whistling sound often reported by other yeti witnesses and seeing a shadowy form dashing behind whatever forest cover was available, yet somehow avoiding to make any noise apart from the aforementioned whistling. He tracked it by its footprints, then got a closer look:

"The creature towered menacingly, its face a grey shadow, its body a black outline. Covered in hair, it stood upright on two short legs and had powerful arms that hung down almost to its knees. I guessed it to be over seven feet tall. Its body looked much heavier than that of a man of that size, but it moved with such agility and power...I was stunned."


He then spent 10 years investigating what he'd seen, interviewing locals in many countries and cultures, and ended up convinced that the names yeti, chemo, yeh-teh, dzu-teh, dremu, migio and meh-teh, and all the other regional names, described, simply, the brown bears of the Himalayas.

He told National Geographic Adventure Magazine when his book, My Quest for the Yeti came out:

"In the eastern part of Tibet they said to me, 'This yeti is stealing women, he's killing yaks, and sometimes in the wintertime he comes and steals a goat. And he is a little bit like we are, and when he is whistling we have to run away' -exactly the stories the Sherpas tell about the yeti. Finally they brought me to a place. They said, 'There is one! You see it?' And it was a Tibetan bear. And they said, 'This is exactly what is stealing the women and killing the yaks.'"


Messner also reported that exactly the same scenario had played out in Pakistan.

In fact, for the sake of putting all of the 'it's just a bear' theories that I know of together in the one place in this thread, I'll add the following, in reverse chronological order:

Sir Edmund Hillary also led a yeti-hunt, in 1960: he was allowed to have a piece of 'yeti skin' and a scalp sent to London for analysis: the skin turned out to be from the Tibetan bear, and the scalp turned out to be an old prop created for religious festivals, by some long-forgotten local, from Serow skin (the serow is a local deer-like creature).

In the 30s, German scientist and future SS officer Ernst Schafer was taken to a yeti-den, where he shot, at point-blank range, what his guide insisted was a yeti as soon as it stuck its head out of the cave. The dead animal proved to be a Tibetan brown bear. Schafer collected a number of 'yeti-pelts' during his time in the Himalayas, all of which he donated to European museums and which turned out to be bear hides.

The first westerner to encounter 'yeti tracks' was an Englishman, Major L. A. Waddell, in Sikkim in 1889. Waddell reported the tracks, and his guides' yeti story, but was personally convinced that the tracks were those of the Tibetan brown bear.

The Tibetan brown bear is -supposedly- a close relative of the North American grizzlie, and is similar in size.

All quotes and data from Junior Skeptic's '50th Anniversary of the Conquest of Everest special' in Skeptic Vol. 10. No. 2.
 
Rather lightweight article but I was wondering if anyone know what the epedition was that is refered to?

Date Published: Monday 10 May 2004

Allure of the elusive yeti



I REALLY do hope that I live long enough to see at least one of the world's myths and legends realised.

I want to watch as aliens step from their silver spaceship to greet their human hosts. And I long to turn on the telly and see incontrovertible proof that the Loch Ness monster lives happily beneath the waters.

But most of all, I want to see a Yeti, because when I was a small boy, I desperately wanted to be among the party that discovered them.

In reality, the Yeti is probably the only one of these mythical figures which hasn't been bombarded by the weight of scientific suspicion to the point where it is simply a standing joke.

I have no doubt that there are currently individuals camped along the shores of Loch Ness, armed with the latest technology and an unstinting belief that he exists, who cannot possibly be convinced that they are wasting vast portions of their life seeking something that is about as real as Peter Pan.

Yet the Yeti is different and when I wrote an essay on the probability of its existence at the age of 12, my cast-iron theory earned me an A-star and a pat on the back from the headteacher.

True, a young lad called Titterington was awarded the same mark for a spurious debate on the existence of Hobbits in the Cheshire countryside.

But I can only hope that he's eating his words now.

Last week, an expedition left Britain to travel to the deepest gorge in the world - situated in Tibet - to search for proof of the Yeti's existence.

I wanted to be on that trip, but sadly couldn't make it. I feel this was mainly due to the fact that none of the explorers had read my definitive treatise on the subject. It also had something to do with the fact that my wife would have divorced me for being pathologically stupid.

Over the coming weeks, people with open minds will venture into the Tibetan wilderness to search for evidence of the existence of a creature reckoned to be smaller than an average man, but thick-set.

People who have seen him say he is ugly, hairy, walks on two legs, but drops to four when crossing rough terrain. Imagine a Leeds United supporter taking a stroll on the Yorkshire Dales and you're pretty much there.

Will they find it? I don't know, but wouldn't it be a wonderful antidote to the shamefulness we have witnessed elsewhere in the world this year?

First published: May 10

http://www.thisisbournemouth.co.uk/dorset/bournemouth/columnist/BOURN_COLUMNISTS1.html

Emps
 
This appears to be the expedition mentioned above:

Patrick's in search of the yeti . . .

18 May 2004

AN ADVENTURER has set his heart on finding a yeti and exploring a hidden Himalayan valley.



Patrick Woodhead, from Bury St Edmunds, will explore Tibet's Tsangpo Gorge – first discovered by the Thane of Cawdor, a name synonymous with Shakespeare's Macbeth.

His search follows on from his epic and record-breaking journey to the South Pole last year.

His mother, Jenny Woodhead, said: "He's fascinated by the idea of the place and will be travelling from Kathmandu to Lhasa and then on to the gorge.

"It will be a gruelling journey and I think he wants to write another book about his experiences there."

Mr Woodhead has made a name for himself having recently written a book, Misadventures In A White Desert, about his part in the youngest and fastest team ever to reach the South Pole.

He has also written an article for a national newspaper about his new obsession to hunt for the mythical yeti, said to haunt the snows of the Himalayas.

In the next few weeks, the 28-year-old will be descending into Tsangpo Gorge, the deepest gorge in the world.

The gorge was originally discovered by the Thane of Cawdor, in 1924, and Mr Woodhead learned of it through his friendship with the present thane's daughter.

"When he heard about the gorge he began to research it and became determined to go there," said Mrs Woodhead.

She added that his yeti search was a little tongue in cheek but his determination and drive would make the trip a success, regardless of whether he finds the beast or not.

When he returned in June, he would spend some time recovering but was already planning a spectacular return to the South Pole later in the year.

http://www.buryfreepress.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=843&ArticleID=790902
 
If it's true that nature abhors a vacuum, then aren't there a couple of ecological niches in North America and the Himalayas just begging to be filled by a hitherto-undiscovered form of higher primate (that's presuming that they're not already extinct, of course... ;) )?
 
Whistling Jack said:
If it's true that nature abhors a vacuum, then aren't there a couple of ecological niches in North America and the Himalayas just begging to be filled by a hitherto-undiscovered form of higher primate (that's presuming that they're not already extinct, of course... ;) )?

Why pick on N America and the Himalayas... wouldn't the same hold true for, say, London (especially the Westminster/Downing Street area?)

(sorry :D )
 
You raise an interesting point there, and very likely a whopping great hole in my argument ;) . I honestly don't know the answer to this one - were there higher primates in Europe? What done did do happen to them? Is we they or are them us? Does anyone fancy a banana..? :)
 
Whistling Jack said:
You raise an interesting point there, and very likely a whopping great hole in my argument ;) . I honestly don't know the answer to this one - were there higher primates in Europe? What done did do happen to them? Is we they or are them us? Does anyone fancy a banana..? :)

Well although the early European primates are a bit out of my area of expertise I do know there are quite a few fossil primates from Europe at least as advanced (if not more so) than their contemporaries in African. There are large quantities of finds from northern Turkey (from around Sinop) and there is Oreopithecus (the 'swamp ape' much beloved of Aquatic Ape advocates). The latter is one most like apes of any fossil of the period and was one of the few (the only one?) that was adapted for suspensory locomotion and there are often claims that it may have been bipedal. Basically if there were claims for a large hairy biped in Europe then this would be the fossil evidence put forward as a possible ancestor (a far better candidate than Gigantopithecus esp. as we have a nearly complete skeleton and other remains - mainly from Italy). However, the large fossil apes largely disappear from Europe during the Messinian Salinity Crisis, when the Med dried out, which marks the Miocene/Pliocene boundary (ish).

Quite a bit of the Oreopithecus debate was carried out in the PNAS which makes all but its most recent papers available online (they hav a slightly different method of paying for things as they charge the author to have their papers published) and you can view them via:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/search?fulltext=Oreopithecus

[edit: A recentish copy of the Journal of Human Evolution is available free and it contains a reanalysis of the Oreopithecus grip and a quick overview of where the debate currently stands:

http://tinyurl.com/r9agj

Cooooooooo thats a dirty geat big URL - if that doesn't work go to this address:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00472484

and click the yellow symbol in the list.]

Emps
 
What about Homo erectus who in varying forms was found all over europe and asia?

The trouble with all these apes is that we are fairly certain that most were social animals, most ASBM reports (not all!) are of individuals.

Orangs live pretty much on their own, and so presumably would our old friend Gigantopithecus, who was a member of their family (as opposed to chimps/humans)
 
Homo Aves said:
What about Homo erectus who in varying forms was found all over europe and asia?

Homo erectus was a hominid and would have been recognisably like us (but in some ways not like us) and a relic population (if one existed - they disappear from Europe and Africa by aroun 800,000 years if not earlier although the Chinese hominid may have survived much later - possibly down to 100,000 years) wouldn't be mistaken for a hairy hominoid.

Emps
 
How do you know they `werent` hairy?

And they certainly were unusualy tall.
 
HA: I can't know that they were but best bets in the field are that we probably evovled our hairlessness around this time when we moved out of the trees and became fully bipedal (it was part of a whole suite of thermo regulatory adaptions that make our operation in open savannah environments effective).

No they weren't unusually tall - they'd have been around our height. While still robust postcranially the essentially modern human bauplan was in place with the emergence of Homo erectus.

Emps
 
Thursday, 10th June 2004

Explorer's hunt for Yeti


A PART-TIME "Indiana Jones" is returning to a jungle island hoping to bring back pictures of a Yeti.

Tests by experts at Cambridge University and in Australia have confirmed that a footprint and hairs previously brought back from Sumatra by Stockport explorer Adam Davies do not belong to any known species.

Now, civil servant Adam and colleague Adam Sanderson hope to bring back photographic proof that the mythical half-ape, half-man said to live in the jungle really exists.

Adam, from Bramhall, and his colleague, from Newcastle upon Tyne, made their amazing discovery while searching for the mythical orang-pendek - also known as the Sumatran Yeti.

The adventurers are now returning to the jungle with a team of local trackers hoping to bring back pictures of the creature, said to walk like a man.

Tales of the orang-pendek - "little man of the forest" - are part of the folklore of tribespeople in Sumatra, Indonesia.

The creature is said to be about 5ft, chocolate brown or orange and able to walk upright.

Sightings

According to folklore, it has incredible strength and speaks a language of its own.

Adam, 35, said: "We know it exists, and a few people have reported seeing it recently. Now we want to take photos of it.

"We are going back for about a month, and we will spend all that time in the jungle with a team of trackers concentrating on three or four spots where there have been sightings. We hope to pick up a trail, try to pick out some areas of elevation in the jungle and then fan out and observe the jungle silently.

"The rainforest is being chopped down. We hope that if we can get pictures, we will be able to help preserve the rainforest from illegal logging."

Following their discovery in September, 2001, the hairs were examined by world-renowned expert Dr Hans Brunner in Australia, who concluded that the DNA matched no known animal.

His findings were confirmed by Cambridge University primatologist Dr David Chivers.

He had previously told the M.E.N.: "The footprints I have looked at are unique. It has something in common with apes, gibbons and humans, but it is different."

Previous expeditions by the two explorers have included a trip to the Gobi Desert in search of the Mongolian Death Worm - a giant killer worm said to fire lightning from its eyes. They plan to return to Sumatra in September.

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/s/119/119385_explorers_hunt_for_yeti.html

Part-time Indianna Jones?? That is pretty weak from the journo there.

[edit: Similarish report here:

http://www.stockportexpress.co.uk/news/index/articles/article_id=16806.html ]

Emps
 
An English translation of a forthcoming paper/article:

To be published in "Natural and Technical Sciences"
(Estestvennye i Tekhnicheskie Nauki, ISSN 1684-2626) 2004, Iss.4, in Russian.
Translation by the author.



On the Himalayan hominoids external sizes

Michael Trachtengerts

Despite of persistent efforts of various expeditions to receive a trustworthy information about the expected primates in the Himalayas, the images of a single exemplar made by A.Tishkov were received till now. The species was named as Alamas alamas [1]. Now I try to estimate numerically the sizes of the hominoid body.

Comparing the relative dimensions of the animal and a nearby boulder, A.Tishkov had defined at observation that its height did not exceed 1 m 40 cm. With this in view and taking hominoid images in three forms [1], it is possible to get realistic estimations of the size of its body.

The relative measurements which have been made on the images yielded the following results in distance between some points in relative units of length (with errors approximately 2 - 4 units):

From top of the head up to the shoulder joint ¾ 48 units;

from the shoulder joint down to coxal joint ¾ 70 units;

from the shoulder joint down to the elbow ¾ 55 units;

from the elbow down to the hand ¾ 35 units;

length of the hand with extended fingers ¾ 28 units;

from coxal joint down to the knee ¾ 48 units;

from the knee down to sole ¾ 51 units;

length of the foot ¾ 30 units.

With these measurements the height of the straight alamas is 217 units and the ratio of height to length of foot is 217/30 = 7.2, that is within the limits of this parameter for human. Thus, with alamas height 140 cm the real length of its foot, taking into account possible discrepancies, is approximately 19 cm.

That shows also the value of the relative unit of length 140/217 = 0.65 cm. I applied the measurements and general appearance of the creature to its lateral view that resulted on Figs 1.

Fig.1. Side view of Himalayan hominoid Alamas alamas.

Now we can estimate now such important an anthropology characteristic of a primate, as intermembral index (IM). It shows relative proportions of limbs for primates and is the ratio of full bone lengths of arm and leg multiplied by 100. With the data mentioned above (with the amendment of 4 units on thickness of the anklebone the tibia will equal 47 units), IM of alamas is approximately (55+35) \ (48+47 *100 = 95. The human IM is 72 in average, chimpanzee’s ¾ 106, and gorilla’s ¾ 117 (See Jeff Meldrum). Thus this index for alamas shows intermediate position between human and apes though it is closer to the last.

Now I have used the relations received for estimation of stature of large hominoids which footsteps were photographed by E.Shipton. It had been shown in [2] that the snapshot represents overlapping tracks of two exemplars. We shall take into account that the ratio growth to length of foot will be somewhat low for big heavy primates. Adopting that it may be about 6.5, we shall get that the height of the first exemplar with foot of 35 cm was about 2 m 30 cm, and the second with 28 cm foot was about 1 m 80 cm high.

Comparing parameters of growths and weights for big anthropoids it is possible to estimate also weight of the animals. Robust anthropoid, and even a stout human can weigh about 150 kg at growth of 180 cm. If the larger of these exemplars had the same proportions of its body his weight, in view of cubic dependence of weight from linear dimensions (linear ratio is 230/180=1,27 and cube of 1,27 is 2,05), could exceed 300 kg.

It is known that anthropoids show significant sexual dimorphism with overwhelming advantage of males in size and weight. The assumption that among moving together animals the larger exemplar was male and the smaller female is quite realistic.

Citations

1. Trachtengerts M. Unknown primate of Himalayas. The integrated scientific journal, 2002, #20(43), pp. 30-35.

Also see at: http://alamas.ru/eng/publicat/Trachtengerts1.htm

2. Trachtengerts M. The Himalayan snapshot by Shipton and Ward - new analysis of the footprint, Natural and Technical Sciences (Estestvennye i Tekhnicheskie Nauki, ISSN 1684-2626) 2003, Iss.6, pp.75-78.

Also see at http://alamas.ru/eng/publicat/Shipton_e.htm

http://alamas.ru/eng/publicat/Tracht8_e.htm
 
Why I believe in the Yeti - the account given in The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz. This is a true account of how the author and his companions escaped from a siberian prison camp, across th Gobi and over the Himalaya during the war. The book needs absolutely no tall tales to make it anymore exciting, and Rawicz mentions his "abominable snowman" sighting almost in passing

"They could not have been much less than eight feet tall...the heads were squarish and the ears must lie close to the skull...There was something both of the bear and the ape about their general shape, but they could not be mistaken for either"

Interestingly, Rawicz believes the sighting lead indirectly to the loss of one of his party down a crevasse

"I think that, in causing a deviation of route, they brought our final disaster upon us".
 
J Napier in his book, `Bigfoot` is rather doubtful about the authenticity of that account.
 
Ah. Does he think it was mistaken identity or fabrication?
 
Filmmakers spot Yeti in Shennongjia

http://www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-08 13:29:34

Beijing, Oct.8 (Xinhuanet) -- Shooting on "The Love Story in Shennongjia", staring Ke Lan and Geng Le, has started in the Shennongjia Forest in central China's Hubei Province, China Radio International reported on Thursday.

Ke Lan, otherwise known as Michelle, is a former host of Hong Kong's Phoenix television channel, but she quit to pursue a career in acting.

The entire crew waited in the forest in the hope of catching a glimpse of a Yeti-like creature.

It is reported that they saw three of the creatures, who soon disappeared into the forest.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-10/08/content_2063299.htm

I think the critical question is did they actually get ony of these sightings on film?
 
God save us all:

CAGE ON THE HUNT FOR TIBETAN APEMAN

NICOLAS CAGE is on the hunt for a mythical red-haired apeman who lives in the mountains surrounding Tibet.

The eccentric CON AIR star, who boasts he is fascinated by modern myths, saw the story about Tibet's answer to the YETI and now he wants to meet the beast.

He says, "These scientists are convinced that somewhere in the Asian mountains of Tibet there is a short red-haired two-legged ape man.

"They've seen it and they're trying to get it. Now, that's fascinating to me. I'd like to go meet this guy. I want to look at him. I want to say `Hi' to him."

Cage admits his interest in all things beastly and hairy has been spiked after coming face to face with wild dogs in Africa.

He adds, "We have dogs around us every day but to see a wild dog in its own nature is like seeing a cave man. It's like I kind of know you but I don't and you're interesting.

"I'm fascinated by that kind of thing; fascinated by the as-yet undiscovered, but possible. I like anything that makes you wonder; that isn't totally spelled out for you."

--------------------
13/11/2004 02:43

Source
 
"They've seen it and they're trying to get it. Now, that's fascinating to me. I'd like to go meet this guy. I want to look at him. I want to say `Hi' to him."

The `First` thing we all learn about Yeti and relatives; They dont do interviews...
 
"I don't care! I ain't no freakin' monument to justice! I lost my hand, I lost my bride . . .!" ~ Nicholas Cage as the romantic lead whose name escapes me, in Moonstruck. A little caveman-like himself isn't he? I hope he finds the Yeti.

Edit: omg! I just noticed I've become a Yeti myself.
 
Article published Jun 25, 2006

Disney World displays local man's picture of purported yeti hand

By TAVIA GREEN, The Eagle-Gazette Staff

[email protected]


LANCASTER - Cryptozoologist Marc E.W. Miller and four of his colleagues left Ohio for Nepal and the Tibet border in February 1986 to search for evidence of a yeti - commonly known as the abominable snowman or Bigfoot.

When Miller, a Lancaster native, left for his great adventure 22 years ago, he never imagined he would hold what was believed to be the scalp of a yeti, receive possible hair samples from a yeti and take a picture with what is believed to be a yeti's hand.

"To find something is unexplainable," Miller said. "It's how you feel when you win. ... It's that adventure and excitement."

A cryptozoologist is a researcher who studies creatures that haven't been proved to exist.

The picture of Miller holding a case with the yeti's hand is now displayed for people from all over the world to see while enjoying the thrills of "Expedition Everest" at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom.

The Everest Expedition rollercoaster train stops in the museum briefly during the ride.

The ride opened two months ago in the Buena Vista, Fla., Disney theme park and features an exciting real-life depiction of what the Himalayan mountains are like - including a life-like encounter with the yeti.

But finding possible evidence of the yeti is the outcome of only one of Miller's world expeditions.

Miller, who has practiced as a neuropsychologist in Lancaster for more than 20 years, has been all over the world. He has explored primitive society in Africa, searched for rare animals in China and Egypt, withstood various types of climates and dangerous situations and wrote two books about his adventures.

One of his most prized finds was a rare species of the Asian elephant in China.

"I was paralyzed when I saw it," he said.

Pictures and keepsakes of all of his adventures hang on the walls of his safari-themed neuropsychology office.

Having an artifact from one of his expeditions displayed publicly is something Miller thinks is quite unique. He plans to go to Florida to see the Yeti attraction one day.

"I'm happy I've lived and got to see more primitive society," Miller said. "I've had quite a few adventures."

(Bright Spot is an occasional feature showcasing Fairfield County residents and good things happening in the community.)

Copyright ©2006 Lancaster Eagle Gazette
 
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