'Yeti' footprints sighted claims Indian Army tweet - and social media reacts

For centuries, humans have been searching for the Yeti -- and now, in an unceremonious tweet, the Indian Army is claiming to have found evidence of the mythical Himalayan monster.

On Tuesday, the official, verified Twitter account of the Indian Army's Additional Directorate General of Public Information tweeted a picture of what it claimed were Yeti tracks in the snow.

"For the first time, an Indian Army mountaineering expedition team has sited (sic) mysterious footprints of mythical beast Yeti," read the post, which was accompanied by three pictures of footprints, and a group photo that appeared to be of the expedition group.

For the first time, an #IndianArmy Moutaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast 'Yeti' measuring 32x15 inches close to Makalu Base Camp on 09 April 2019. This elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past. pic.twitter.com/AMD4MYIgV7

— ADG PI - INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) 29 April 2019

The prints allegedly measured 32 inches by 15 inches (81 centimeters by 38 centimeters) and were spotted on April 9 close to Makalu Base Camp, an isolated mountainous area between Nepal and Tibet, the tweet elaborated. "This elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past," the post claimed.

Unsurprisingly, the tweet prompted a flurry of incredulous responses on social media, with many rebuking the Indian military for propagating theories previously debunked by science. Others poked fun at the tweet, with the hashtag #Yeti becoming one of the top Twitter trending topics in India on Tuesday.

The Indian Army provided no further evidence of its find and had not replied to CNN's request for comment by time of publication.

Little known fact for all you doubters who say it was one-legged: yetis prefer to catwalk. #Yeti pic.twitter.com/TJ8kWGfR00

— Dhruva Jaishankar (@d_jaishankar) 29 April 2019

In a press release on March 26, the Indian Army said an 18-strong unit would make its its maiden expedition to Mount Makalu between March and May. The unit was heading there as part of its objective of reaching the summit of all challenging peaks above 8,000 meters (26,247 feet), the statement said.

In Nepali folklore the Yeti -- dubbed the "Abominable Snowman" in the West -- is a furry ape-like creature taller than an average human, which inhabits the Himalayas and other regions.

It's shameful that people are asking the army for proof. #Yeti #MythicalYeti #BelieveTheMyth https://t.co/luL1PJ8zva

— Siddharth (@Actor_Siddharth) 30 April 2019

Their existence has been never been proven, but they have captured the imagination of many, including acclaimed British naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

The Indian Army doesn't usually venture into matters of mysterious monsters -- many of its tweets are more mundane, about former army members or public events.

While the latest claim has aroused excitement among Yeti-lovers on social media, it is at odds with scientific findings.

Congratulations, we are always proud of you. salutes to the #IndianArmy Moutaineering Expedition Team. But please, you are Indian, dont call Yeti as beast. Show respect for them. If you say he is a 'snowman'.

— Chowkidar Tarun Vijay (@Tarunvijay) 29 April 2019

A 2017 study on the Himalayan "Yeti" used mitochondrial DNA sequencing to examine 24 "Yeti" samples including hair, bone, skin and feces. Charlotte Lindqvist and her team discovered that some of the items came from a Himalayan brown bear and a black bear. One tooth was from an animal in the dog family. The paw of the "Yeti" kept in a local monastery came from a black bear. Another bone kept as a monastic relic was from a Tibetan brown bear.

Other investigations reached similar conclusions. A study in 2014 found 30 hair samples believed to come from Yetis had actually originated from a variety of beasts such as a Paleolithic polar bear, other types of bear and dogs.

Kushal Prajapati, who describes himself as a scientist in his Twitter bio, responded to the Indian Army's tweet on Tuesday, saying: "With all due respect, institutions such as yours should be more responsible and careful before going ahead and declaring the sighting of any footprints as 'Yeti's'!"

He added that there was a lot of research done on Yeti in the past, and none had proved the creature's existence.

The Yeti became part of local traditions about 350 years ago, when a holy man named Sangwa Dorje took up residence in a cave near the remote village of Pangboche, which had a clear view of Everest.

According to local folklore, he was said to have been aided by Yetis and to have kept relics from the beasts.

Yeti fever took off in the West after British explorer Eric Shipton snapped a picture west of Mount Everest in 1951 of what appeared to be a large primate-like footprint.

(Source: CNN) 

DNA reveals the Yeti is actually a bunch of bears

Ancient legend meets modern genetics, writes Sarah Zhang in the Atlantic. Read on: 

In the fall of 2013, Charlotte Lindqvist got a call from a film company making an Animal Planet documentary about the yeti, the mythical apelike creature that roams the Himalayas. So, not the kind of thing scientists usually like to mess with. “Friends or colleagues were saying, ‘Oh, watch out. Don’t get into this whole area,’” she recalls with a laugh. But she said yes.

Lindqvist said yes because she is a geneticist who studies bears, and the rare Himalayan brown bear is one possible origin of the yeti legend. The team from Icon Films wanted to use science to investigate whether the yeti is real; Lindqvist wanted to investigate the enigmatic bears of the Himalayas.

The Himalayas seen through clouds

Wild bear DNA is not easy to come by. Over the years, Lindqvist, a professor at the University at Buffalo, has built up a network of wildlife-biologist contacts in Alaska, who send her samples that have helped illuminate the evolution of polar bears. Scientists know much less about bears that live around the Himalayas. But if a film-production company was going to pay a crew to travel around the mountain range collecting possible samples of fur and bone, then she just might get a scientific project out of it, too.

The results of that unusual collaboration were published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Lindqvist and her colleagues used DNA to identify nine “yeti” samples.

These include: a thigh bone found by a spiritual healer in a cave that turned out to be from a Tibetan brown bear; hair from a mummified animal in a monastery that turned out to be from a Himalayan brown bear; a tooth from a stuffed animal collected by Nazis in the 1930s that turned out to be from a dog. The rest of the samples turned up five more Tibetan brown bears and an Asian black bear. For comparison with verified bear samples, Lindqvist also reached out to her network of research contacts in museums, zoos, and Pakistan’s Khunjerab National Park, who provided her with bear hair, bone, and scat to sequence.

Charlotte Lindqvist in front of a map showing where yeti samples
have been found (Icon Films)

Altogether, this search for the yeti yielded a surprising portrait of bears living around the Himalayas. The Tibetan brown bear and Himalayan brown bear, long considered to be subspecies, are quite distinct genetically. The latter diverged from all other brown bears about 650,000 years ago, when the formation of glaciers may have isolated a population that became the first Himalayan brown bears. Today, this ancient lineage of bears is critically endangered.

Lindqvist focused her analysis on DNA in the mitochondria—structures in the cell that have their own small pieces of DNA separate from the DNA in chromosomes. Mitochondria DNA is only passed down the maternal line, but when it comes to sequencing, it has the advantage of being more abundant in cells. This is especially important when working with degraded and decades-old samples. Her team eventually sequenced, for the first time, the entire mitochondrial genome of the rare Himalayan brown bear.

A family of Himalayan brown bears, including a female and two cubs, in northern Pakistan.
Norwegian University of Life Sciences / Snow Leopard Foundation

Other scientists have sequenced supposed yeti samples before—notably Bryan Sykes, a geneticist at Oxford who actually appeared in a previous yeti film by the same documentary team that aired on the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 in 2013. (Interest in the yeti never dies, apparently.) In it, Sykes says the hair matched no modern bears but an ancient 40,000-year-old polar bear, suggesting the yeti is actually an unknown, perhaps hybrid bear. Sykes later published the results in a scientific journal, but other scientists criticized him for extrapolating too far from a fragment of a single mitochondrial gene.

Lindqvist thinks she has resequenced one of the same samples, and based on the whole mitochondrial genome, the purposed yeti hair indeed came from a Himalayan brown bear. Ross Barnett, a paleogeneticist at the University of Copenhagen, praised the methods in the new study. It’s the first time, he says, that he knows of a study using whole mitochondrial genomes to place bears in their evolutionary and geographic context.

The Animal Planet film eventually aired in May 2016 as Yeti or Not? Near the end, Lindqvist appears to reveal the last of the DNA-sequencing results. The show has been building up to this moment, hinting at possibilities like a new hybrid bear or maybe even an undiscovered hominid. “When I had to reveal to them that okay, these are bears, I was excited about that because it was my initial motive to get into this,” says Lindqvist. “They obviously were a little disappointed.”