Yeti (Asian Bigfoot) finger discovered

io9.com; BBC; DailyMail.co.uk; FactFictionandConjecture.ca; Wisdom Quarterly

The Yeti specimen was recently rediscovered in a British medical museum. In Buddhist cosmology a yakshi is a female ogre or demon.

The Curious Case of the Severed Yeti Finger

Hill, who first encountered the specimen while perusing a collection of human and primate skeletons at the College's Museum [asked himself,] "What was the story behind this finger, I wondered, and how did it end up in London? Where was the rest of the ‘Pangboche hand'? And what truth was there behind the label's claim that this finger belonged to the Yeti of ancient legend?" Hill unravelled a long and winding history with wealthy American oilmen funding Nepalese expeditions to investigate Yetis; a secluded Buddhist Monastery, hidden away in a remote Himalayan mountain range that once housed not only the Yeti finger, but an entire hand...

In 1974, Lap Kadoma -- the wife of a Nepalese Sherpa -- had a close encounter with a Yeti. The legendary cryptid, Kadoma would later recount, had managed to sneak up on her from behind before heaving her into a river. When Kadoma regained consciousness, she found the bodies of several dead yaks strewn nearby.

Kadoma's account of her encounter with a Meh-te, or "Man-bear," as Yetis are known in Nepal, may sound far fetched. But reports like hers are common in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet, where legends of the mythical creature have been passed down for generations. Far less common, by comparison, is physical evidence for the Yetis' existence.

One such specimen, known to curators at the Royal College of Surgeons' Hunterian Museum in London as the "Yeti's finger," was recently re-discovered... More

• Yeti finger to have its DNA tested
• Tracing origins of "Yeti finger" (BBC)
  
• The search for the missing Yeti hand
  
• Virtual tour of the RCS Museum
• The mystery of Inca Empire was its economy
• Modern hunt for France’s Beast of Gévaudan
• Quest for perfect smile required shocking faces

The Daily Mail backed the Yeti Everest Expedition in 1954, where a team of scientists managed to track several trails of giant footprints on their trek.

YETI SIGHTINGS (BBC)

• 1925: Photographer N.A. Tombazi, with the Royal Geographical Society, reported seeing a creature and its prints near the Zemu Glacier on Kanchenjunga (Mountain, Nepal).
  
• 1953: Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reported seeing large footprints while climbing Mount Everest, Nepal.
  
• 1972: A Yeti attack on the wife of a Sherpa was reported.
• 2011: Kemerovo State University in Russia is setting up a research institute to look into the growing number of reports of Yeti sightings in Siberia, 15 in the last year.

Yeti: Japanese Team Searching (Video)

Japanese decorator goes to Himalayas in search of the elusive yeti

Julian Ryall in Tokyo (15 Aug 2008)

A Japanese decorator will set off from Tokyo on Saturday on an expedition to the Himalayas in search of the elusive yeti.

Yoshiteru Takahashi, 65, claims to have seen a group of three yetis on his last visit to Nepal, in 2003, but maintains that the light quality during the evening sightings was too poor for him to take photographs.

This time -- his fifth such mission -- his seven-strong team is equipped with state-of-the-art motion-sensitive photographic equipment and they plan to position it along a ridge at an altitude of 4,800 metres in a range of mountains some 200 km from Kathmandu.

"The ones that I saw were small, around 85 cm tall, but it was getting dark and it was difficult to see them properly," said Mr Takahashi.

"I don't know what they are, but they appear to be some sort of hybrid of chimp or orangutang without a tail."

Mr Takahashi and his team plan to stay at their base camp for six weeks to catch a glimpse of a creature, which he described as "shy".

He traces his obsession with a creature that many believe is mythical to his first visit to the Himlayas, in 1971.

"I have climbed the Dhaulagiri (White Mountain) massif four times, and every time, I saw footprints of the yeti," he said.

"In 1971, one of my expedition members saw one of these creatures.

"It looked like a gorilla," he said. "It was only 15 metres away from him and watching for about 40 seconds," he said.

"It was about 150 cm tall and stood on its hind legs, like a man. Its head was covered with long, thick hair and he was certain it was not a bear or a monkey."

In another visit to the region in 1994, Takahashi discovered what he describes as a "bolt-hole," a natural cave that stretched back 5 metres into a rock face at 5,000 metres above sea level.

"Animals had definitely visited the cave and there were more of the footprints in the snow around the mouth of the cavern," he said.

Unfortunately, his camera failed and he couldn't record his find.

"The footprints that I saw were similar to the one photographed by British explorers Eric Shipton and Michael Ward in 1951," Takahashi said.

Found in the Gauri Shankar pocket, those prints were fresh when the mountaineers chanced upon them. The trail continued for nearly 2 km until it finally disappeared on hard ice.

"The ones I found were smaller and thinner, more like a human foot, with an arch between the heel and the toes," Takahashi said.

"There are no animals that leave that sort of track."

He says the creature is known locally as the "migou" or "bongamanche," meaning "man of the forest," and local people regularly bump into the species on their travels in the region.