"For the first time, an #IndianArmy Mountaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast 'Yeti'" it said in a tweet, not explaining how a mythical beast could leave footprints.
Mountaineers from the Indian army on an expedition in Nepal have found mysterious large footprints in the snow that they think belong to the Yeti, or the abominable snowman, the military said on Tuesday.
Largely regarded by the scientific community as a myth, the Yeti is part of Nepali folklore and is said to live high in the snow-capped Himalayas.
In a tweet accompanied by pictures, the Indian army said it had sighted footprints measuring 32 by 15 inches (81 by 38 cm) close to a camp near Mount Makalu on April 9.
"For the first time, an #IndianArmy Mountaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast 'Yeti'" it said in a tweet, not explaining how a mythical beast could leave footprints.
Located on the border between Nepal and China, Makalu is among the highest mountains in the world and stands near the Makalu-Barun valley, a remote wilderness that has also been surveyed by researchers hunting for the Yeti.
1. Beast from the East
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Tales of a wild hairy beast roaming the Himalayas have captured the imagination of climbers in Nepal since the 1920s, prompting many, including Sir Edmund Hillary, to go looking for the creature.
In 2008, Japanese climbers returning from a mountain in western Nepal told Reuters they had seen footprints, which they thought belonged to the Yeti.
And although they carried long-lens cameras, video cameras and telescopes, they hadn't seen or taken any photographs of the creature.
But scientists have found little evidence of the Yeti's existence so far. In 2017, a group of international researchers studied multiple purported Yeti samples collected from across the Himalayan region and concluded they belonged to bears.
2. Interest from the 50s
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By the 50s, interest in Yetis ran high and various mountaineers launched expeditions to find the creature. James Stewart even claimed to have stored a Yeti finger
But the Indian Army’s latest pictures are sure to quell interest in the abominable snowman once again.
3. What research says
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A 2017 DNA study of purported Yeti samples from museums and private collections provided insight into the origins of this Himalayan legend.
The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, analysed nine Yeti specimens, including bone, tooth, skin, hair and faecal samples collected in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau.
Of those, one turned out to be from a dog. The other eight were from Asian bears -- one from an Asian black bear, one from a Himalayan brown bear, and the other six from Tibetan brown bears.
Our findings strongly suggest that the biological underpinnings of the Yeti legend can be found in local bears, and our study demonstrates that genetics should be able to unravel other, similar mysteries, said lead scientist of that study, Charlotte Lindqvist, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.
Lindqvist's team was not the first to research the Yeti DNA, but past projects ran simpler genetic analyses, which left important questions unresolved.
This study represents the most rigorous analysis to date of samples suspected to derive from anomalous or mythical hominid'-like creatures, Lindqvist and her co-authors wrote in their paper.
