Yeti Hairs DNA Test: Update

UK experts optimistic about 'yeti' hairs

British experts say tests on hairs claimed to come from a yeti in an Indian jungle show they bear "a startling resemblance" to those brought back from the Himalayas by famed New Zealand adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary nearly half a century ago.


"The hairs are the most positive evidence yet that a yeti might possibly exist, because they are tangible," ape expert Ian Redmond, who is co-ordinating the research, told The Independent in London.

The hairs had the same cuticle pattern as hairs brought back to Britain by the late Sir Edmund and donated to the Natural History Museum, he claimed.

"We are very excited about the preliminary results, although more tests need to be done."

The two short hairs - 33mm and 44mm long - were picked up in thick forest in the Garo hills in the mountains of northeast India five years ago after a forester reported seeing a yeti - locally known as mande barung, or "forest man".

Sir Edmund led an expedition at much higher altitudes in Nepal in 1960, and investigated reports of yeti footprints on the Ripimu Glacier at the head of the Rolwaling Valley.

But hidden microphones and cameras enmeshed in trip wires failed to capture a Nepalese yeti's likeness - or record its famous high-pitched whistle - and the Hillary team said that "yeti" footprints they had found were the tracks of a relatively small animal which had melted out in the sun.

Sir Edmund borrowed a yeti scalp from Khumjung Gompa, a Sherpa temple, to take to America and Europe to be looked at by scientists who eventually said the scalp had been made from the hide of the serow antelope - probably intended as a ceremonial hat but gradually acquiring the status of an actual scalp.

A "yeti skin" was identified as a blue bear.

The scalp might not have been the real thing, but one of its guardians, village elder Khunjo Chumbi won a debate with Professor J Millot of the Museum of Man in Paris, who suggested that yetis did not exist.

"In Nepal we have neither giraffes nor kangaroos so we know nothing about them. In France, there are no yetis, so I sympathise with your ignorance," Khunjo told him.