On April 9, 2019, a Mountaineering Expedition Team of the Indian Army, comprising 18 personnel, came across a set of giant footprints in the Himalayas. The team, led by Major Manoj Joshi, was on the expedition to Mount Makalu in Nepal, the fifth highest mountain in the world. The footprints were sited near the Makalu Barun National Park in Nepal.
In a tweet, accompanied by pictures, the army claimed that the mysterious footprints, measuring 32 × 15 inches, belonged to Yeti, a gigantic half-man half-snowman popular in Nepalese folklore.
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However, the claim was dismissed by and large by the scientific community due to the lack of evidence in this regard. A senior scientist at the Wildlife Institute of India said that the footprints were not definite proof to establish the existence of Yetis, in the region. He further stated that the footprints could be of Tibetan brown bear, which enlarged in snow due to the action of wind and sun.
Maheshwar Dakal, joint secretary, Nepal’s forest department, also stated that the Makalu Barun National Park has a brown bear population and that the footprints could be of an overgrown bear or a snow leopard.
But, this was not the first time when such a claim was made and later dismissed. In November 2017, as per a report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal, the ‘half-human half-snowman’ that people claim to have spotted was, in fact, one of the three kinds of bears likely to be spotted in the Himalayan region—Asian black bear, the Tibetan brown bear, and the Himalayan brown bear. The study was based on a DNA analysis of the supposed Yeti samples recovered, including hair, teeth, fur, and faeces.
What exactly is a Yeti?
These unknown creatures allegedly walking the mountains have for long mystified the humans. The mysterious folklore about Yetis prompted many, including Sir Edmund Hillary, to go on expeditions looking for them. The legend of Yeti—a Sherpa word for ‘wild man’—dates back to 1920s. They are said to be huge in size, weighing around 100–180 kg, and living at high altitudes.
In 1951, renowned British explorer Eric Shipton took a picture of a giant footprint with a thumb, found on the Menlyung Glacier on the Nepal-Tibet border near Makalu Barun National Park.
Debunking the theory, Charlotte Lindqvist, associate professor at the University of Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, had said: “Our findings strongly suggest that the biological underpinnings of the Yeti legend can be found in local bears. Brown bears roaming the high altitudes of the Tibetan Plateau, and brown bears in the western Himalayan mountains, appear to belong to two separate populations. The split occurred about 6,50,000 years ago during a period of glaciations.”
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