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The Yeti,....I recently read a book called THE SEARCH FOR THE YETI, written by a mountaineer, who claimed that the enigma of the Abominable Snowman, the rarely sighted creature which roams inhospitable areas such as Tibet, was actually based upon sightings of the elusive and almost as monstrous CHEMO BEAR, a large, hairy creature of a ferocious nature which is able to run on two legs, stand over eight-feet high and swing its powerful arms by its side. Specimens have been caught and killed, and they look truly awesome, especially when on all fours like a gorilla, with a large mouth and blazing eyes, but could these creatures explain away the legend ? Is there more to it all with regards to some unknown ape-like creature which seems to stand between five and seven-feet high. For me, the Yeti legend will exist forever but until constant searches are mounted through the snows and dense woodlands, we'll never know. In its own elusive way, the Yeti may well destroy its own legend, because as we all know, when something cannot be explained, many people tend to dismiss it entirely.
 
In Tibet, according to some monks there are two creatures, one is a large bear known as the chemo bear which is more common than the yeti and has a distinct bear-like 4 toe print , there has been hair samples taken from skin that a monk had and it was proven to be from a unknown species of bear. There also is the other creature known as the Migur or more commonly the Yeti that lives in the mountain range. This creature is more elusive than the chemo bear and has a 5 toe print and is shaped more like a human footprint, the Tibetans have known about these creatures for years and they are even documented differently as separate animals, I remember seeing a program where an old monk showed a scroll which had the different pictures of the two creatures and the scroll was hundreds of years old. Although I have heard a lot of conflicting information about the Migur and the chemo bear. One monk said the Migur was a type of bear but not a bear which to me sounds like the chemo and then there was another monk that said the Migur is more human that bear. I guess well never know until one or both of them are caught or video taped. The whole bear theory does sound strikingly like the Mande Burung (Indian Bear Man) that was caught on video recently, the guy who filmed it said it looked like a bear but different and could walk on two legs. :confused:
If you had to ask I think that the bear creature and the yeti creature are two different creatures, they are confused a lot though and who can blame them for being confused? its not often you see an unknown species on the top of a mountain, I have heard people talk about there experience and it is definitely the chemo bear they have seen and then other people have a story that cant be explained by the chemo bear. I don’t think it is far fetched to think there is more than one unique species of animal that has either evolved in this climate or has been able to take refuge, if it’s possible for one then why not two? Also a lot of the bear/yeti sightings can be explained as when people see an animal they usually think "what other animal does it look like?" Who can remember the okapi being called a small giraffe? I do, although it looks nothing like a giraffe. Perhaps the reason why the yeti is sighted as being a bear is that there is no other creature to compare it to, and a bear is the only creature it comes near to. Yetis must be incredibly furry to withstand the cold so their appearance would be more of that of a bears than any ape; well that’s what I think anyways.
Oh and finally I also heard a story from a Tibetan that he witnessed a yeti and bear fighting on the top of a mountain and it ended with the yeti winning that would have been good to see.
 
A lot of you probably saw the TV programme that was on about a year ago, about guys wandering round Bhutan to look for the yeti. They saw the famous 'yeti scalp', which seemed to come from a new type of bear, but also near the end an old hunter took them to a hollow tree he claimed was a real yeti's lair. They found hair on the tree, which, when taken back and genetically tested, seemed not to come from any known animal group, whether ape, bear or what have you.

I was fascinated by this, but haven't heard anything about it since. Has anyone else? Did the hair turn out to be a known animal after all? Have the full test results not come out yet? Surely this is the most important yeti evidence in ages - why hasn't more been written about it?

The story also appeared briefly elsewhere - http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_262696.html
 
According to the Tibetians there are several types of yeti.
One is ten feet tall whenon his hind legs though he prefers to go on all fours and is covered with shaggy hair. This sounds a lot like chemo bear. They prey on livestock. One type of yeti is 100 feet tall, lord of all yeti. One type of yeti has flaming eyes and teeth a3 feet long. The man eating yeti has a coconut shaped head.
A larger yeti can also eat 10 men with ease.

Interesting fact- female yetis are called yetini.
 
Yes- they are supposed to play with children but savage any dog or livestock animal that approaches them.
 
A so-called yeti scalp was doing the rounds a bit back, but turned out to be made out of the skin of a type of goat-antelope called a serow.
 
What about that other programme that said it, or the Chinese Wildman at least, might be a descendent of the gigantopithecus?
 
That scalp was a good counter argument. Many of the arguments seem to be about how these people "live in harmony with nature" and have accepted the yeti as a part of the fauna for hundreds of years. So if they can screw up like that, it doesn't lend much credibility to the rest of their stories.
 
if the chemo bear does exist, would it be larger than a Polar bear?
As people speculate that the Yeti/Bigfoot etc has been able to escape official detection due to terrain, and a sort of almost human intelligence, which enables it to hide. As far as i know bears don't display this ability, so how could an animal the size of a large bear, possibly even polar bear size remain undiscovered, as presumably the Himalayas were in the past as well travelled as the arctic.
 
Hasn't it also been reported to have been seen jumping around? Bears don't jump over gletcher cracks and such I think.
 
Thylacine said:
if the chemo bear does exist, would it be larger than a Polar bear?
As people speculate that the Yeti/Bigfoot etc has been able to escape official detection due to terrain, and a sort of almost human intelligence, which enables it to hide. As far as i know bears don't display this ability, so how could an animal the size of a large bear, possibly even polar bear size remain undiscovered, as presumably the Himalayas were in the past as well travelled as the arctic.

I've seen it argued that because the Himalayas contain deep, uninhabited, forested valleys there could be ample space for whole tribes of cryptids to survive undiscovered - hence their relatively scarce sightings and footprints, cos the only times they venture onto the snowfields is to cross into other valleys. The arctic, on the other hand, is a bit flatter, and polar bears tend to remain closer to the coastline, as do indiginous humans, such as Eskimo, so Polar Bears are spotted relatively often.

Bear in mind pandas occupy similar terrain to the Himalayan valleys and were considered mythical (to Westerners) for years, as were gorillas: they were only found cos Europeans colonised Africa and were exploring intensively. As usual, in both cases the locals knew all about them. Tempting as it may be to dismiss local knowledge as folklore, strong and thriving local wisdom should be respected, IMHO.
 
But as the scalp showed, sometimes the noble and proud natives are just plain wrong.
 
Xanatic said:
But as the scalp showed, sometimes the noble and proud natives are just plain wrong.

And sometimes they're absolutely right. These things have to be verified, of course, but to dismiss all local knowledge as just myth is as counter-productive as blindly believing it. I'm not sure what the demographic is like regarding Urban Legends in these sparsely populated regions (oxymoronic I know), but they don't have the internet/TV/local press to act as a catalyst, so when self sufficient, isolated communities all come out with a similar story, much of it within living or even current memory, there has to be something to it, surely.

The scalp was not a yeti one, fair enough. But bear in mind local guides are essential when on a cryptid hunt - the hairs collected recently in the Himalayas to which Karl Shuker referred would never have been found without local knowledge of good places to look.
 
Ive never heard of any scientific study been done on the scalp, the only opinion ive heard on it was by a debunker who went to the Himmys to disprove the myth.
 
It was Heuvelmans himself who examined the Khamjung scalp and proved it was made from the skin of a serow,an Asian mountain goat.
 
There seems to be an inherent flaw in the scientific method - due, no doubt, to human nature - that leads to the following simplified scenario:

Scientist demonstrates that something 'amazing' is real - instantly 'debunked' by a dozen other scientists.

Scientist demonstrates that something 'amazing' is not real - accepted by scientific community.

So the only researchers left (in either case) are amateurs, who have trouble proving anything, or even raising funds to do so, becasue it's 'scientific fact' that they're wrong......

And, of course, the locals are 'superstitious natives'........


(My bespectacled, smoking avatar was originally a Bhutan Yeti.....

.... any similarity to my good self is entirely due to pre-historic cross-breeding)
 
That isn't a flaw in the scientific method. That just means there are less amazing things in this world than we would like. And that often when scientists look at something, they find it to be rather mundane.
 
Xanatic said:
That isn't a flaw in the scientific method. That just means there are less amazing things in this world than we would like. And that often when scientists look at something, they find it to be rather mundane.

Would these be the same scientists who said that the lowland gorilla couldn't possibly exist?

:)
 
Having spent some time in the Himalayas I would have to say that "deep, uninhabited, forested valleys" are pretty thin on the ground up there. Like every other spot on the globe, if there is a half-way decent patch of land anywhere there'll be people in there trying to make it work for them (and b*ggering it up in the process). It's just not true that there's huge areas of the Himalayas that no-one ever goes into. And the areas where the most persistent yeti stories are to be found, such as the Khumbu and the valleys up Gokyo way, are quite densly populated by Himalayan standards.

It's also true that many, if not most, of the younger Sherpas consider the yeti to be just a superstition promulgated by the old folk.

However, it is true that the Himalayas are home to many rare, elusive and strange creatures. I myself have seen snow leopard tracks in fresh snow above 4,500 metres. It had crossed our path no more than an hour or so earlier, yet the whole valley was as quiet and still as a tomb. I still haven't seen a snow leopard in the wild, yet I believe they exist. But I'm not so sure about the yeti, at least as it is most often portrayed.
 
I stand corrected - 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. Anyone else out there got the book cos mine vansihed in non-Fortean circumstances some years ago..

This, however, is certainly true of China, wherein the Yeren is said to lurk, and Pakistan's Barmanu (?) is said to live in rough sub-mountainous forest. Neither of these are a million miles away from the Himalayas.

Stu
 
Yeah, Stu, it may have been the case a while ago that the Himalayas had such valleys, but Nepal has been in the grip of a population explosion for years now.
 
Sebastian said:
Yeah, Stu, it may have been the case a while ago that the Himalayas had such valleys, but Nepal has been in the grip of a population explosion for years now.

Ah - the Clarke book was written twenty years ago, and Willans was talking about incidents some years before that, so that could explain it.

Course it could (even probably) be that Yeti, Yeren, Almas and Barmanu are all the same animal under different regional names - once spread across the whole region (Gigantopithecus?) now confined to small pockets and slowly evaporating as man encroaches.

It's not just little animals that die out with de-forestation.:(

Stu
 
Is the Yeti the missing Link?

Chinese scientists believe Yetis may be a "missing link" between ape and man that has survived, in small numbers, into the 21st century. Scientists think these creatures may be an early form of man that lived 10-15 million years ago and still exists in the Himalayas.
Fossilized remains of such creatures have been found in Turkey, Kenya, Nepal, India and Pakistan, where Bigfoot sightings have been reported.


Check out these links for more information.

http://www.nepalnews.com.np/contents/englishweekly/sundaypost/2002/jul/jul28/head.htm#1

http://www.nbc5i.com/news/1596347/detail.html

This brings back the old question, Is the Yeti/Bigfoot etc a man or an animal? I dont suppose it will matter much in the way it is treated IF there is ever a live specimine brought in for study. If this is to happen I think they should put a rush on things considering there isnt suppost to be that many left.
 
IMHO, I hope the only specimen they get is dead. I think it would be horribly cruel to keep a creature like a bigfoot in a caged and run tests on it. The researchers I know are pretty much in agreement that bigfoot are "social" creatures, i.e. live in small groups. To separate one and force it to live alone could well mean a slow, sad death for it. But that's just my personal viewpoint. :mad:
 
If there was a dead specimen found then that would only be the start. There would be countless ammounts of expeditions launched to go find a live Yeti, and now that they know they exist there would be major funders like the discovery channel and other big companys funding you.
Before the Gorilla was considered an animal and just a myth many people came to the african congo to try and capture a glimpse of one of these mysterious creatures. The lack of funding meant very little people got the chance to see one but now a tourist can go to Africa and view Gorillas in the wild, soon it will be that way with the Yeti if they are ever discovered) Elusive creatures are only elusive if we dont understand them.
Scientists now can even capture the larvae of the giant squid because they know what depth temperature and pressure these things thrive in. It wont be long till we understand the nature of the Yeti and there will be documentarys popping up all over the place. That is of coarse if this creature exists.
 
IMHO - anyone who claims that Bigfoot/Yeti/Alma/Yowie/Orang Pendek etc is the 'missing link' simply doesn't understand the scientific implication of the term 'missing link'.

The term missing link gets banned about way too often by people (and some scientists) who really don't understand the term.

Only two months ago archaeologists dug up a skull that has shortened the 'missing link' period, which by definition proves that there is no single missing link, but rather several thousand years of evolution.
 
I watched the second half of a programme on Nat Geographic yesterday - an expedition to Bhutan to find the Yeti (I forget what the local name for it was). At the end of the programme they found a huge tree in the forest they were searching which was (according to the locals) a favourite spot of the yeti. They found a lot of scratch marks on the bark of the tree, and also one hair complete with follicle.

This hair was tested in the lab and the DNA on it did not match any known primate or bears, indeed it was stated that the DNA was of an 'unknown' animal.

Does anyone know if this has been followed up or if anything more has been found out?

Carole
 
carole said:
I watched the second half of a programme on Nat Geographic yesterday - an expedition to Bhutan to find the Yeti (I forget what the local name for it was). At the end of the programme they found a huge tree in the forest they were searching which was (according to the locals) a favourite spot of the yeti. They found a lot of scratch marks on the bark of the tree, and also one hair complete with follicle.

This hair was tested in the lab and the DNA on it did not match any known primate or bears, indeed it was stated that the DNA was of an 'unknown' animal.

Does anyone know if this has been followed up or if anything more has been found out?

Carole

do you know if the lab in question had a comparison for the rare chemo bear ?

This is a bear that lives in the same region, and has a very unusual foot (for a bear) - it is quite elongated - I am fairly convinced that this combined with high altitude and fatigue is responsible for the majority of yeti sightings.

Paul
 
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