Snow Man Bear

"Lets get down to the root of yet another famous and elusive creature? Is it a goat? Maybe a bear? Or is there really a yeti in the Himalayas? Tune in for some hardcore Cryptid facts!"

Presented by: Chelsea
Category: Cryptid

The Yeti is half-mythological feature and half-cryptid. Considered the Asian equivalent of Bigfoot, it is said to resemble an orangutan with dark fur (contrary to depictions in popular culture) and man-sized still with the Sasquatch's giant feet.

"Modern" (read: recorded by white people) sighting begin in 1832, when a trekker named B. H. Hodgson reported seeing the creature in the Himalayas and believed it to be the orangutan as it fled. Orangutans live nowhere remotely near to Nepal.

Near the end of the century and into the next, giant footprints first identified as belong to a bear were found. The investigation led to reports of the Yeti, but were always secondhand at best. The locals identified it as the "man bear snow bear". This was mistranslated to filthy snowman which was changed to Abominable Snowman. Sightings increased as the race to the top of Everest ramped up. Based on his experiences, Sir Edmund Hillary entertained the possibility of the creatures existence.

In the the 1950s, expeditions funded by Tom Slick discovered what were reported to be hair, fecal samples, skull,s a scalp and even a hand smuggled in by James Stewart were discovered. The results were successful enough, in one case discovering a new type of parasite, for the American government to regulated further expeditions.

However, research debunked these. The hand was human, the scalps were goats and the footprints belonged to bears. The skull was believed to be an extinct polar bear, but this was later determined to be a modern bear with contaminated samples. Most of the samples were determined to be bears.

It was not fruitless. They were able to prove that the two types of bears in the region were in fact the same type of bear in different stages of life.

The sightings are harder to explain. The Gigantopithecus, and extinct megafauna ape is a popular candidate as it is with Bigfoot. The Gigantopithecus is believed to have been extinct long before modern humans evolved.

Takeaway: It's always fascinated to find out new things, even if you don't find Cryptids.

Trivia

 * Patreon skit: Instructional cooking show.