UPDATE: According to The Sun, Marshani is quoted as saying, "...it was a bit of fun made for the kids at the national park here."
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| Screen capture of the Yeti captured |
Monsters and Critics reposts the story below:
Moscow - Conflicting reports on the possible live capture of a yeti-like creature were emerging from Russia's rugged Caucasus mountain region, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday.
'The creature looks like a gorilla, about two metres tall, probably a male, and it's very massive. But a gorilla stands four-footed, and this stands vertically, like a person,' Bagaudin Marshani, former head of the labour ministry in the territory of Ingushetia, told the agency.
The creature was being held in a private zoo in the village of Surkhakhi, in Igushetia's Nazran district, some 1,480 kilometres south of the Russian capital Moscow, Marshani said.
'It growls and makes strange sounds ... and eats meat and vegetables,' he said. 'Some people say it's an Abominable Snowman, and others say that it's a great ape. But honestly, I've never seen anything like it.'
Marshani said Russian border troops captured the creature after a hunter shot and wounded what he suspected to be a bear in a forest near Nazran. When the animal rose up on two feet and ran away, he called the authorities.
However, a statement by the border troops command contradicted Marshani's account, stating, 'This information as reported in mass media is not based on fact and is an invention.'
Authorities in Moscow had been informed of the capture and a team of scientists was en route to Ingushetia to investigate, Marshani said.
In September, a search team led by Russian heavyweight boxer Nikolai Valuev found possible evidence of yetis in a remote valley in the country's central Siberian Kemerovo region.
Members of Russia's respected Academy of Sciences later said that hairs and track photographs collected by the Valuev expedition were inconclusive.
