The Yeti: A Story of Scientific Misunderstanding
The Yeti is a cryptozoological phenomenon popularized in the early 20th century by British mountain explorers in the Himalayas.
Those who claim to have seen it report a modest-sized, two-legged, hairy mountain creature with disproportionately large feet.
A recent scientific study has shown, once and for all, that physical evidence (fur, bone and skin) purported to be from the Yeti are instead from bears, based on genetic analysis.
Bear species that fall within the “range” of the Yeti include Asiatic black bear and two subspecies of brown bears, the Tibetan and Himalayan.
The reports of Yeti sightings began as soon as Western explorers made headway into the Himalayas. The explorers gathered first-hand accounts from locals and translated these observations into prosaic descriptions of the creature’s shape, fur color and gait.
With this, the Western world began to believe that the Yeti could be real, and Yeti-finding expeditions were dispatched.
Over the decades, Yeti encounters continued to accumulate, though physical evidence has always been elusive.
Nonetheless, the existence of the Yeti could never be ruled out. The Himalayan wilderness seemed vast and inaccessible enough for the existence of an undiscovered animal to be plausible.
In his book The Snow Leopard, famed nature writer Peter Matthiessen writes about a 1973 Himalayan expedition to study the blue sheep. Throughout his narrative, the author seems just as primed to spy a Yeti as he is a snow leopard. And we read that his companion, legendary wildlife biologist George Schaller, also refuses to rule out the Yeti’s existence.
Of all mythical beasts, the Yeti has received the most attention in actual peer-reviewed scientific journals. It has been the subject of articles in such top-tier science and conservation publications as Oryx, Proceedings of the Royal Society B and Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
