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YetiThe "abominable snowman" is also known as yeti or mighu (pl. m'ghira,) or miteh, and bongamanche ("man of the forest.") In Mongolia, there is the almas. In Garo, a language of Meghalaya, a small hilly Indian state on the north-eastern border with Bangladesh, it is called "mande burung." Renewed interest is due to the fact that British scientists are currently analyzing some hairs, one of which has a root attached providing DNA for comparison with various species. As you may know, several casts have been made of mysterious footprints, neither ape-like nor human, found in the high mountain terrain of Asia and the Americas. In spring of 2001, a mysterious black hair was found in a cedar tree-root den in a bamboo jungle in Bhutan. Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the Oxford Institute of Molecular Medicine, one of the world’s leading experts on DNA analysis, and the first to extract genetic material from ancient bones said, "We found some DNA in it, but we don’t know what it is. It’s not a human, not a bear nor anything else we have so far been able to identify. It’s a mystery and I never thought this would end in a mystery. We have never encountered DNA that we couldn’t recognise before." ~ The Times, London April 6/01, Discovery News, "Scientists Claim Yeti DNA Evidence" by Rossella Lorenzi:
The Tengboche IncidentA report was filed in the valley around Tengboche monastery in Nepal stating that one evening, when a herder came to get the yaks, three were found cruelly slaughtered. The local people attributed this to a mighu since it has the reputation of getting the animals to thrust their horns to earth, which leaves them vulnerable to disembowelment. The yeti eats "the still living, still warm innards."
According to The Japan Times (Aug. 14, 2003) "The rare specimen, having been stolen once, is now kept under lock and key in a glass container. Reddish-brown in color, the scalp is about 20 cm high with a thick head of hair parted and brushed back from the center. Scientists, however, have questioned its authenticity." Th[is] specimen, known as the Yeti of Khumjung . . . is in the monastery near Namche Bazar in Nepal, [and] was donated by a lama who had found it near Pangboche. In 2003, Yoshiteru Takahashi, a 60-year-old painter from Tokyo, set out with a team of six other climbers. With support from a Japanese newspaper, for 2 months they staked out the flanks of 8,167-meter Dhaulagiri, which Takahashi had scaled in 1975 and 1982.
SightingsResearchers rarely find evidence, unlike local inhabitants who occasionally meet with it while going about their daily routine. In 1925, Greek photographer, N. A. Tombazi, a member of the British geological expedition in the Kachenjungma region, described a creature he saw moving across a Himalayan slope at an altitude of around 15,000 feet. He estimated it was about a thousand feet away. "Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes," said Tombazi, "It showed up dark against the snow and, as far as I could make out wore no clothes." But before he could take a photograph, it disappeared. When Tombazi left the team to check out the terrain, in the snow he found 15 footprints from one and a half to two feet apart, ". . . similar in shape to those of a man, but only six to seven inches long by four inches wide at the broadest part of the foot. The marks of five distinct toes and the instep were perfectly clear, but the trace of the heel was indistinct . . . ." Later, the local people said it was a "Kanchenjunga demon." In 1938 Captain d'Auvergue, curator of Calcutta's Victoria Memorial, was traveling alone in the Himalayas when he became snow blind. He related that, when he was almost dead from exposure, a nine-foot tall Yeti saved his life. In 1951, in the Gauri Shankar pocket on the Menlung Glacier at an altitude of 20,000 feet, tracks were photographed by British mountaineers Eric Shipton and Michael Ward. The prints were fresh when discovered, and the men followed the trail for a mile before it disappeared onto the ice. Each footprint was thirteen inches wide and up to eighteen inches long. Scientists who viewed the photographs could not positively identify the tracks, noting that depressions in snow get bigger as the snow melts in the sun. Some felt the trail was that of a langur or a red bear, but neither animal is bipedal. In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay found giant foot prints on their way to their record Everest ascent. The London Daily Mail sent an expedition in 1954, and American oilmen, Tom Slick and F. Kirk Johnson, financed trips in 1957, '58, and '59. In 1960, sponsored by World Book Encyclopedia, there was an expedition lead by Sir Edmund Hillary in association with Desmond Doig. Well equipped with the finest photographic technology of the day and despite a ten-month stay, the group found nothing but a couple of blue bear skins and the scalp of a serow. Doig concluded that the size and activity of the group had precluded any chance of a yeti encounter, since neither did they see a snow leopard. Besides the 1971 sighting by a Takahashi climbing team member, British searchers reported a sighting in 1974. After thirty years in the Himalayas, Desmond Doig believes reports of the mysterious creature refer to three distinct animals: First, what Sherpas call "dzu teh," the one that attacks cattle and which is probably the Tibetan blue bear -- a creature known in the West only through a few skins, bones and a skull; the second is probably a type of gibbon that may live as far north as Nepal despite the fact its usual range is south of the Brahmaputra. The third, known as "mih teh," is the mysterious hairy creature living as high up as 20,000 feet.
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