Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Yeti: The Asian Bigfoot

Episode Date: May 31, 2025

We've covered Nessie and Bigfoot, so why not tackle the Yeti? Listen to this classic episode and hear Josh and Chuck cover what used to be known as the Abominable Snowman. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. And that turns out to be pretty neat. And if the story about Jimmy Stewart in here sounds familiar, we also recently covered it in our Tom Slick episode, So You're Not Experiencing Deja Vu, which is another episode that we did before. So You're Not Experiencing Deja Vu, which is another episode we did before. Enjoy! Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there somewhere

over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the Continuing Cryptozoology edition. Oh, this finishes it right? Oh, I don't know about that. We've done Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Yeti. We haven't done like Mothman. The Chupacabra? Chupacabra, that's a big one too. Yeah. Slender Man?

Slender Man's more internet folklore than anything. Did we do that one or did we think about it and not do it? The latter of those two. If I remember correctly, I said it stinks or something. Yeah, if I remember correctly, it hurt my feelings. Oh, man. I think it was, I think my feelings. Oh man. Oh. I think we could do Slender Man now. It was just so early on that it was very thin.

Now I think it would be more robust. It was slender. Yeah, that's right. Well, today we're talking about the Yeti, which is not slender. Depending on which Yeti you're talking about, Chuck, it's either enormous and like eight feet tall, covered in gray or white or maybe sometimes reddish hair,

weighing 400, 500 pounds easily. Yeah. Or actually it is kind of slender. It could be basically what amounts to a wild hippie, basically, somebody who likes to grub roots out of the ground and lets out a squeal or a cry every once in a while just to, I guess, know that they're alive. And there's really two competing versions of what those of us in the Western world would think was the Yeti.

But the one we're really talking about is the first one, what we also think of as the abominable snowman. How tall was Hippie Robb? He was average like five something, I guess, like high fives probably. He was a little shorter than me. Okay. Yeah. He was not the Yeti of legend as far as I know.

He could be now though. Well, I don't know. He just sounded an awful lot like him. Kind of does, doesn't it? Yelping in the mountains, scrubbing for roots. Yep. Covered in dirt and with wild, crazy hair. So I think we should just tell, like, if you don't know what we're talking about, this is the legendary beast that lives in Asia.

Yeah, around the Himalayas typically. Yeah, so it's known as Asia's Bigfoot or maybe Bigfoot is known as North America's Yeti. I don't know. I guess Yeti came first, right? Yeah, I think Yeti's been around with the Sherpa of Tibet for a very long time. Yeah, and that's sort of the deal of this, the origin story of this thing is the Yeti has been told for many, many years in traditional stories in that area. There was someone named Shiva Dakal that collected a bunch of these stories in a book called Folk Tales of Sherpa and Yeti. And all of them kind of figured the same way, which was whether it's a story called The Annihilation of the Yeti in which this is pretty good. It's about Sherpas seeking revenge on a tormenting group of yetis.

This sounds like something that should be on like the sci-fi channel. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't. But all of these stories basically have the same moral message at the end, which is it's sort of like a Grimm's fairy tale, like be careful out on the woods. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I think it serves the exact same purpose too, like in the Grimm's fairy tales, and I thought the same thing, you know, there's witches that live in candy houses, so don't go wandering off in the woods, kids, because you'll end up getting eaten.

For little kids in Tibet, it was don't wander off into the Tibetan plateau, or the Yeti will get you and you will, all sorts of terrible things will happen to you. Which is funny because there are all sorts of real things that could kill you in the Tibetan Plateau. Well, that's what I think what they were saying was, you know, you can't just be like, look out for the bears. You can't?

The kid will be like, I don't know, I can see a brash kid being like, no, a bear. Everybody knows what a bear is. I'll wrestle a bear any day of the week. Yeah, maybe. And then, you know, along the way, it gets into a drinking contest with Marion from Indiana Jones. Oh, yeah.

Pistole. Right, exactly. That was one of the best scenes in the history of film. Yeah? Yeah, I think so. And Tibetan kids tend to agree with me too. But before we move on, I want to say one thing. That annihilation of the Yeti,

keep that in the back of your mind. The story was that there were a bunch of Yeti that were hanging around, and the Sherpa were sick of them hanging around. So the Sherpa basically threw a Yeti party and got drunk and fought with each other to kind of provide an example to the Yeti, hey, you should get drunk and fight with each other too,

in the hopes that the Yeti would destroy each other. It didn't work and the Yeti all managed to escape, except for one who was supposedly killed by a Lama, one of the Buddhist monks in the area. Oh, that's part of the story? That's the end? That's the annihilation of the Yeti story. Wow. I didn't know a lama figured in. And really annihilation is kind of a strong word if you think about it.

Because if you just kill one out of, I think, 240 Yeti, it's hardly annihilation. That's a good point. I think so too. So throughout history, these legends have been pervasive in the region, so much so that supposedly, the great Alexander, or Alexander the Great, I'm not sure why I did that. When he came through town and conquered the Indus Valley, he said, I'd like to see one of your famous Yetis. I don't know if that's what Alexander the Great sounded like. No?

No. What did ancient Romans sound like, if not Italians? Was he Roman? I think he was Greek. Oh, was he? Uh-huh. Geez. How about a...

I really screwed that up. Give us a... Let's see. I knew that. Do a German accent for him. I'm just going to leave. No, hang tight, Chuck. You can rebound.

Yeah. Why did I think he was Roman and not Greek? Because the Romans like to pretend they were Greek themselves. I'm not firing on all cylinders. But regardless of my bad accent, or maybe I should just edit back in and say that was my Greek accent. There you go. He said, I want to see a Yeti.

And they, the locals, they were like, you know, we totally would do that. However, you can't get them down this low. And you'd have to hike really high up in those mountains and I know you're not down with that. So, sorry. Yeah, exactly. So I guess Alexander the Great was like, I'm bored, I can't believe we're still talking about this.

Give me some wine. Yeah, pretty much. And got in a drinking contest and that was that. So the Yeti continued on in Sherpa tradition in Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. But in the West, it kind of disappeared from view until the 20th century. And so remember, these are tall tales that the Sherpa teach their kids. Although there is supposedly some, I guess, general belief as well, but I can't quite penetrate it.

But just imagine that it was just strictly tall tales that Sherpa people told their kids. Then Westerners came in and said, what is this you're talking about? Tell us about this. And just bought the whole thing hook, line and sinker. Yeah. And things really took form in 1921. There's a journalist named Henry Newman. He did an interview with some British explorers and this is a time of great exploration, especially from the British.

These sort of, I guess, Indiana Jones-like mountaineers who would go all over the world in search of these jungles and mountains in search of crazy beasts and treasures and things like that. Right, sure. So he interviewed some of these guys and they said, you know what? We found these huge footprints up in the mountains and the locals there, I guess Sherpa, said because what, isn't Sherpa the plural Sherpa? Didn't we determine that? I'm pretty sure, yeah.

That was a good episode, by the way, everyone. It was. Go back and listen to that one. What was the title? Warm, Friendly Living? Yeah, because that's I think what Tenzing Norgay said. So great. Yeah. So they said that their guides, our Sherpa guides, called them Mito Kangmi, which the translation, the real translation is a little awkward, Man Bear Snowman.

But Newman confused all that. He got the snowman part right. But he translated that first part to mean Mito, M-E-T-O-H, to mean filthy or dirty. And then he changed that on his own to the word abominable. And that's where we get the abominable snowman. Yeah, he was like, I don't like filthy snowman. I'm going to change the name that I've already gotten wrong and turn it into abominable snowman. Yeah, he's a great journalist.

But it's fascinating that you can trace it back to this one dummy. Yeah. That's the whole, the abominable snowman, that's where it came from, was this one guy. And that obviously just completely captured the attention of the rest of the world when he wrote this. Because like this was not just like, oh yeah, they heard about an abominable snowman. It was these explorers found tracks and their Sherpa guides told them the tracks belonged to this abominable snowman. Therefore, there are abominable snowmen living in the Himalayas. And the explorer who led that particular expedition was Charles Howard Berry, Howard hyphen Berry, B-U-R-Y. And apparently he and Newman were really big into promoting the idea of

an abominable snowman or men living in the Himalayas and that it just being like this giant huge creature with shaggy hair and very much akin to Bigfoot. But if you look at the descriptions, the traditional descriptions of the Yeti, they're much smaller and not nearly as huge as the Westerners kind of immediately made it out to be. Yeah, there was one description, one of the earlier written descriptions from 1942. There was a researcher named Mira Shackley. And I believe that she got this information from two hikers that reported seeing the Yeti. Right.

And this is what they said. The height was not much less than eight feet. So tall for sure, but it's not like it was ten feet tall. The heads, because there were two of them, were described as squarish and the ears must lie close to the skull because there was no projection from the silhouette against the snow. The shoulders sloped slowly down to a powerful chest covered by reddish brown hair which formed a close body fur mixed with long straight hairs hanging downward. About the size and build of a small man, the head covered with long hair but the face and chest not very hairy at all.

This all sounds like, they always describe him as, or it, as bipedal. Right. Means, you know, walking upright. Right, but if you go back and look at that 1942 description and how detailed it was. Those hikers who gave the description said that they saw all this from observing two black specks moving across the snow about a quarter mile below them. And yet they could see that it had a thick undercoat and like a very long, hairy overcoat

and that it was reddish. Like that's just basically perfect abominable snowman sighting. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. But it's one of like many, like after that Howard Berry expedition came back

and Newman broadcasts to the world, people started going to the Himalayas and droves and they weren't just necessarily looking for the abominable snowman. Everest was there and everybody knew Everest was there and a lot of people wanted to be the first one to summit Everest, the first Westerner I should say, to summit Everest. So while a lot of them were in the area, they're like, well, we'll look for the abominable snowman while we're here too.

Yeah, and some pretty legendary mountaineers and granted these are not like zoologists or anything, but they're respected men in their field. People like Reinhold Messner and one Sir Edmund Hillary both searched for evidence of the Yeti while they were hiking. And Messner even wrote a book called My Quest for the Yeti, Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery. Right. But, I mean, well, we'll save the big reveal to the end.

Right. Or the third act of this show. Okay. Is there a third act? Yeah, there's got to be. Okay. We're in big trouble if there's not. Well, why don't we take a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about a couple

of more of these reported sightings. Let's do it. All right. Well, now when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know! All right. Okay, Chuck.

So we've started to get some sightings from expeditions that are going to Everest and just hanging around the Himalayas. And then I think in 1951, something really big happened. One of those explorers, Eric Shipton, took a photograph of a track that to this day looks pretty remarkable actually. Yeah, I mean this is, again, it's not like hard evidence, but this is a very famous photo. I remember seeing this when I was a kid. And like, I guess it was probably the Guinness or Ripley's Believe It or Not or something. It was Time Life Books for me.

Was it? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I remember that it's a very famous picture of like a pickaxe. Yeah, used for scale. Yeah, right next to it. And I remember that very distinctly when I saw this picture. I was like, oh yeah. And then when you look at it, you're like,

wait, that doesn't look quite right. That's a really weird track. It looks like an elongated human foot, but rather than a left toe, it's got, it's kind of bulbous and weird. It doesn't look like the other toes, and it certainly doesn't look like what a human toe should look like. And it's kind of bulbous and weird. It doesn't look like the other toes and it certainly doesn't look like what a human toe should look like.

And it's also huge. I think it was, it measured about 13 inches, which is a pretty typical size for a Yeti track from what I understand over the ages. But the thing about it is, it is a nice, crisp, fresh track. And the other thing about it, and this is what really captured the attention of the world,

Eric Shipton was not known to be a particularly fraudulent person. He was a very respected explorer and mountaineer. He knew the area well. And as a guy who has tracked Yeti his whole life, I believe his name is Daniel Taylor. Yeah. Daniel Taylor put it, if Shipton's coming back with a picture of a track, you know it's

a real track. It's not faked. It's not a hoax. So the question was, what was it? And this is 1951. And it hit the world. That picture, that track hit the world like the surgeon's photo of the Loch Ness Monster hit the world back in 1933.

It just became like proof to people who believe in the Yeti around the world that the Yeti definitely exists. Yeah, I mean, like you said, it was really what made it different than other photos that it was so sharp. It was a really good picture. And that little toe thing basically looked like a thumb. And it just, you know, it looked odd. But this Daniel Taylor guy, he actually, when I started reading that article, I thought, oh boy, this crackpot.

But he actually turned out to be a pretty cool guy because because he'd spent a lot of his life looking for the Yeti, went over there, even met with the King of Nepal. And the King of Nepal said, well, if you want to go to the wildest place, and the most remote place in our land, go to Barun, B-A-R-U-N, this Barun Valley. Right. And he went there and he looked around and he did not find a yeti, but what he did do was ended up helping to work toward conservation of that area, which was kind of a nice silver

lining to his story, was he got there and he was like, this is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Right. And one of the greatest wildernesses I've ever been to, he realized it wasn't protected and that Chinese loggers were infringing on one side and farmers were infringing on the other. So he kind of spun it into good work doing conservation work in that area, which was kind of cool. Yeah, it got it turned into a national park in Nepal.

It's a protected area now, which is significant. Have you seen pictures of the valley? Oh, yeah. It's astounding. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life. And it was just being used because the people living there are like, well, we need this land. Yeah, it's beautiful, but we can't afford to preserve it

because a lot of people around here live on $15 a year. Right. So they were just making use of it however they could. And he came in with the government and said, no, no, no more of that, get out of here. This is protected now. But it is gorgeous. And he had actually been raised there, Daniel Taylor.

His grandparents were missionaries in the Himalayas and his parents kind of took over his grandparents' work. So he was raised in the Himalayas. So he'd been looking for the Yeti his whole life. But when he went to the Baroon, he feels like he found the answer to that track, that it was a kind of tree bear. But there's a big problem with that.

The Baroon Valley is a subtropical rainforest, so a tree bear living in there wouldn't survive very well in the snow of the Tibetan Plateau, you know, 10,000 or more feet higher up the mountain. So it doesn't really solve the mystery much. No, but his notion that it could have been a tree bear makes a little more sense with these tracks because a tree bear does have a, I don't know if you call it a thumb, but some sort of opposable digit to make climbing easier.

And that would at least explain this weird thumb-like thing in these prints. It would. So he's got like half of the thing explained. The other half is what the heck was that tree bear, the subtropical rainforest tree bear doing up in the mountains of the Himalayas, you know what I'm saying? Like in the snow, above the snow line, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

But the other thing about that Shipton photo that became world famous for the Yeti was that like the track itself was very crisp. And there's a guy named Benjamin Radford, who's a skeptic who has written a lot about the Yeti. And in particular, how difficult obtaining Yeti tracks could be or actually more to the point, how easy it would be to confuse a normal animal's tracks

for something weird because of the fact that the snow is a terrible medium for tracks. Because like say a bear walks through an area and leaves some tracks in the snow, the next morning as the sun comes up and it hits the tracks and it shoots all that heat under that track, it starts to melt the sides, maybe elongate it, maybe make the toes look splayed.

And it just doesn't resemble a bear track anymore at all. It looks like something weird and not previously known, like an entirely new species. That's the thing about the Shipton photograph that captured everyone's attention. It doesn't look like that at all. It looks sharp, new, it doesn't look melted at all, the edges are clean and crisp. That's what I think really kind of struck everybody. It wasn't like a melted, mangled track. It was like a new track by something that was not immediately identifiable.

Yeah, for sure. So there have been other photographs through the years as supposed evidence. In 1986, a hiker named Anthony Woldridge said, there's a Yeti over there. He's about 500 feet away and he saw a bunch of tracks in the snow that looked like it was going that way. And he took some photographs that were proven genuine, but I think by genuine that just means they weren't faked. Yeah, that's how I understand it. Because wasn't this the photo that they said,

actually those are just rocks standing up? Yeah. Like a rock outcropping or whatever. Yeah, this guy was also a respected mountaineer and explorer and knew the area really well. And so when he came back with this photo and they said this photo wasn't faked, it's not been doctored. Right.

People listened to him too, but it just turns out he was wrong. This photo of rocks has not been doctored. Exactly. That's ultimately what they were saying because another expedition went back to the same spot the next year and were like, oh, yeah, that's ultimately what they were saying. Because another expedition went back to the same spot the next year, and we're like, oh, yeah, that's those rocks over there. And even in his account, that guy, what was his name, Woodridge? Woodridge says, like, yeah, they just stood there motionless, staring at me.

Like rocks. Yeah, they were still his boulders, as upright boulders. But the other thing is he swore that there were tracks leading up to it. So he seemed to think that they really were there. But from what I understand, he was Ernest in his report. It wasn't like a fraud or a hoax or anything like that. And I think he was a little red-faced afterward, probably. Yeah, they even made a movie about it called Ernest Goes Hiking.

Right. Ernest saves Christmas with the abominable snowman. I'll bet Ernest did save Christmas in one movie. I guarantee there was a movie called Ernest Saves Christmas. I think there was, right? No? The only one I'm 100% sure of is Ernest Goes to Camp. I never saw any of those.

My family saw that movie in the theater. Oh, that's- Paid top dollar. The only one I'm 100% sure of is Ernest Goes to Camp. I never saw any of those. My family saw that movie in the theater. Paid top dollar. Top dollar, which was three dollars. Yeah, I guess. I hope so at the time. Which is surprising because my mom used to sneak in bulk candy from like the little store across the way from the movie theater in Southwick Mall. Yeah, we know that move in our family. Yeah, it works really well. So over the years there have been not only things like, oh look, footprints or hey, look

at that rock across the valley. There have been, I don't want to call it evidence, but alleged evidence brought forward by legitimate scientists and people like Sir Edmund Hillary. He brought back a scalp and said, he didn't say, I scalped the Yeti, but he said, hey, I think this is a Yeti scalp. I don't think he was trying to fool anyone though, was he? No, no, no. He was supposedly kind of a casual believer in it.

He'd been sent on a Yeti expedition by New World Encyclopedia years before. Yeah. And he came back with a Yeti skullcap that he'd gotten from a monastery in Nepal. They had a Yeti skullcap and a hand, a Yeti hand, a mummified Yeti hand. And what's crazy is that Yeti skullcap was supposedly the scalp of the one Yeti hand. And what's crazy is that Yeti skull cap was supposedly the scalp of the one Yeti that had been killed during the annihilation of the Yeti story. So he brings it back.

I think it wasn't that he was gullible. And I also am sure it wasn't that he was a hoaxster. He was the kind of scientific person who kept his mind open until the evidence was in. Man, can you imagine a time when an encyclopedia company would send Sir Edmund Hillary out on assignment? Mm-hmm. Like how great is that? I know. That was the mid-20th century.

It was a great, great time to be alive in the way of wonder and curiosity. So yeah, he comes back with his scalp and it turns out they did a little research. And it's an animal called a cerro. It's kind of like a goat. Yeah, some poor cerro got scalped. Yeah, but that happened a lot. Like there was this finger, and this is a pretty good story, that actor Jimmy Stewart, believe it or not, was involved in smuggling out a supposed Yeti finger. Yeah, from, again, from a monastery. I believe it might have been the same monastery. Yeah, and wasn't he just on vacation there and just got sort of mixed up in this plan?

Yeah, we got to mention Tom Slick, the oil man. Yeah, because he figures into this story. He was a rich guy who, he was one of these dudes, this sort of adventuring rich guys that was like, I'm a Yeti hunter for this year. Yeah, and when you say hunter, like, he was a hunter. His entire point to finding the Yeti was to shoot and kill it and to take it back and have it stuffed.

And the government in Nepal had a real problem with that and basically said, your expedition is banned, nobody can come in here and kill the Yeti. And apparently the US State Department got in touch with Nepal and said, hey, by the way, we have the same feeling. We have a policy of not killing yeti either. So apparently with that, Tom Slick's expedition was allowed back in on the basis that they would never try to kill the yeti except in self defense. Okay.

And I guess later on, when he became interested in Bigfoot, he had a change of heart. And he stopped hunting to kill and started hunting just to find and maybe capture on photograph and that was it. And his change of heart changed the way that Bigfoot is searched for to this day and the Yeti. Now it's a much more peaceful search. He was like the last of the big game hunters involved in trying to find unidentified animals, again, to kill them so they could be stuffed and kept at the National Geographic Society or something like that. Matthew Feeney Yeah, I mean, and that was a big thing that Daniel's guy talks about just these legends in history and how quote unquote science back

then was in the Victorian age were, because you know all these tales of Tarzan and these fantastic beasts. People would just, these rich people would go into the jungle and search for animals that no one had ever seen before so they could shoot and kill them and bring them back and say look at this weird thing. Right, and I mean, a lot of people don't really, like you point to the guys who are out there like doing the hunting and killing and the exploitation and all of that,

but they were very frequently working at the behest of museums who for a very long time got a pass even though they were the source of those expeditions and the funders of those expeditions. And the reason people were out there in the first place was to go get specimens for the museum's collections. And ostensibly to study or whatever, but it was to study them dead.

And I think probably because there wasn't really any reliable way to ship a live specimen back in a lot of ways, but also there was. So I think Tom Slick kind of represented the end of that and then the beginning of this new era of much more peaceful exploration and expeditions. Yeah, and I don't want to leave everyone hanging on Jimmy Stewart. He was on vacation I think in Calcutta, got mixed up in this Yeti finger, helped smuggle it back and they finally did DNA testing about seven or eight years ago and they said, oh,

this is a human finger. Right. But, I mean, for a while there they weren't 100% sure. And I guess Tom Slick was friends, had a common friend with Jimmy Stewart, and Jimmy Stewart happened to be in India. And so Tom Slick's agents in Nepal managed to get this finger to Jimmy Stewart, who agreed to smuggle it out on the basis that Jimmy Stewart's luggage is not going to get searched. And Jimmy Stewart smuggled a Yeti finger out of India and to the UK for it to be studied.

I'll go ahead and put the finger in my bag. I was so hoping you were going to do a Jimmy Stewart Yeti impression. In my head I was like, ah, Jimmy Stewart, can I pull that off? You did, man. You nailed it. All right. Well, let's take another break and we'll come back and talk more about DNA and how that is figured in the search in more recent years, right after this. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck,

you should know. So Chuck, you remember in the Loch Ness episode, the Loch Ness Monster episode, we talked about how there's like a new search going on where they're sampling the loch itself and examining it for DNA. Apparently, applying modern genetics and genetic analysis to cryptozoology is like the next chapter. And rather than saying like, oh, well, that's it for us. Our big fraud is over with cryptozoologists are like, oh, well, that's it for us. Our big fraud is over with. Cryptozoologists are

like, awesome, good. We finally have the tools now to find out, to get to the bottom of this stuff and actually discover new specimens or new species. So they seem to be quite happy about it and quite excited, although a lot of their beliefs hang in the balance and could just be have the legs cut out from under them by science. That's true. Science wins. In 2013, there's a geneticist at Oxford named Brian Sykes who said, all right, Yeti holders

of Yeti pieces, send them to me. If you have any Yeti hair, Yeti teeth, yeti tissue, send it to Oxford University." And he got it. He got 57 samples. They picked 36 of those to do some DNA analysis on. And most of these turned out to be animals that we all know, like bears and cows and horses. At the time though, he found a couple of samples from Bhutan and India that he said were 100% matched for jawbones of a polar bear from the Pleistocene era. And this kind of excited people because this may have been, I mean, not the Yeti, but this may have been sort of a combination, a hybrid of a polar bear and a brown bear because this

is when they were diverging genetically. And that in itself would be a pretty cool find. Yeah, oh yeah. It would be a new type of bear that was a direct descendant from bears that went extinct about 40,000 years ago, and it'd be a type of polar bear. There aren't polar bears in the Himalayas. There's black bears, there's brown bears, there's Himalayan bears,

there's tree bears, but there's not polar bears. So, and the fact that, like, he accidentally found this by putting out this call for samples of Yeti or Bigfoot or whoever just made it all the sweeter. They're like he had just accidentally discovered a new type of polar bear living in the Himalayas. Yeah, but sadly that was not even the case. Some more scientists came along later. They did reanalysis and I think what they landed on was, you know, unfortunately these, I think you're getting a bad reading because of a damaged sample. What these really are, are just

brown bears. They're brown bears. Yeah, some other people followed up because it's not like it was any kind of hoax or anything like that. No, no. It's Wyck, right? His last name is Wyck? Sykes. Sykes. Sykes is like a leading expert on analyzing mitochondrial DNA. Wrote the book, The Seven Daughters of Eve, which kind of introduced the world to genetic analysis through MTDNA. But he just made a mistake or leapt to a conclusion, I think, is the thing that everyone's being too polite to maybe say. But he shared all of

his data on GenBank, which is this huge database, and other people came and analyzed it and said, no, it's just regular bears. And then other people analyzed it and said, yeah, it's totally just regular brown bears that we already know about. Yeah, but science at least was getting involved and scientists kind of roundly were like, you know what, this is great because we're using real science finally. And regardless of what result we get, we're doing it the right way and that's really kind of the thing that counts.

Don't be disappointed that we're not finding the Yeti because, and if it's not clear to everyone listening, it seems like the Yeti are almost always just bears. Yes, not just the tissue samples or the fecal samples or the hair samples, but also the tracks, the sightings, all of it, are probably just Himalayan bears, brown bears and black bears. And that's actually the opinion of Reinhold Messner, who actually is such a mountaineer around the area. He has a museum in the mountains

and one of his Yeti samples were one of the ones that Sykes analyzed. His turned out to be the tooth of a dog. But he says that doesn't surprise me because I think they're all bears. I think all of his bears, including his own sighting. He became infatuated with searching for the Yeti because he spotted something in the Himalayas that he couldn't explain. And then through his own methodical research, he wrote a book about it, he talked to other people about it, he did his own studies, and he kept his mind open and his mind became converted to, it's all bears.

Yeah, pretty much. The Russians got involved, you would think, oh, in what, like the 1960s? No, they got involved about eight years ago and went searching for the Yeti in Siberia. What they came back with were things like, oh, look at this. These twisted tree branches were made into beds or sleeping pods by the Yeti and they twisted these branches. Look at this. It's evidence, but it turns out that they were clearly manmade. There were tool-made cuts, and they were located

not in a remote area at all. Just like right off a trail, I think, right? Yeah, and what people think is, oh, they just cooked this stuff up to try and bring tourism to a not very tourist-friendly area. Right, Siberia. And apparently there's a long-standing tradition among Russians and former Soviets of basically drumming up tourism by playing on people's beliefs in the Yeti and the abominable snowman. And I think there was a period of time, one of the people interviewed in this great BBC article about the Yeti,

this Russian scientist says there's a period of time where it was like very fashionable for the intelligentsia of Russia and the Soviet Union to basically go on trips in the summer looking for the abominable snowman. And they would show up in these towns and every town had a designated Yeti witness. And the Yeti witnesses job was to basically regale them with tall tales that were supposedly true, take them on these tours into the forest, and then make a bunch of money off of them and say, thanks a lot, chum. Sorry, we didn't see anything this time.

But they apparently in 2011, the Russian government orchestrated another one of those through this conference. And from the conference, they announced to the world, they had found indisputable proof that Yeti exists from this bed and these broken branches and supposedly a few hairs attached to a clump of moss. But some other people who were attending, anthropologists and biologists were attending, anthropologists

and biologists were like, no, it's totally made up. This is all just a big tourist PR stunt. Yeah. Which is hilarious. Way to go, Russia. And Putin supposedly tried to do it again in 2016. He announced that he saw three Yeti from a helicopter tour of Siberia. That's funny.

Yeah, I think so too. So, I mean, I don't have much else. Yeti or bears, right? Yeah, we couldn't talk about cryptozoology, though, without mentioning that coelacanth argument. And the thing about the Yeti is that there was actually a species of ape called Gigantopithecus that was like a nine foot tall ape, the biggest ape that ever lived, that lived in that very area and went extinct about a hundred thousand years ago. So the people who really believe in this are like, you know, we thought the Coelacanth went extinct like 60 million years before. We just think this guy went extinct a hundred thousand

years before, who's to say? So that seems to be the thing that's carrying on this belief. That and the fact that as somebody put in one of these articles, all it would take is one yeti to prove that yeti exists, but no matter how much, there's no such thing as evidence that can prove it doesn't exist. So people are always going to believe it.

Just like Nessie. Exactly. And Bigfoot. Exactly. So there you go. If you want to know more about the yeti, go to the Himalayas and look for it yourself. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

Or we should mention, if you're in Disney World, there's a roller coaster ride called Expedition Everest, colon, because you know, every good roller coaster has a colon in the name. Right. Colon, legend of the Forbidden Mountain. There is a track on display there that the reason it's not in a scientific museum and it's at Disney World is because it's a Yeti track. But you can go look at one. From a TV show. Yeah, this guy named Gates, who is not a zoologist at all, but he's an actor and an animal track, or I don't even think he's an animal tracker, is he?ist at all but he's an actor and an animal tracker or

I don't even think he's an animal tracker is he? No no he's an actor and a TV presenter and a producer. Yeah so they presented one on his TV show and now that's in Disney World. Yeah so and if you're in Disneyland there's a Yeti on the Matterhorn ride. Oh really? Like a real Yeti on the Matterhorn ride. Oh, really? Like a real Yeti? Yeah, they have one chained by the neck inside the Matterhorn.

It's really scrawny. They clearly aren't taking very good care of it. Amazing. Well, I already said it's time for listener, Mail Charles. Yeah, I got distracted, sorry. So I'm gonna call this follow up on the chili finger

that Jimmy Stewart planted at Wendy's And and quick shout out there's a local listener from Georgia Tech But I just wanted to say hello to a couple of people I met last weekend at the High Museum When I went to the infinity mirrors Exhibit oh isn't that amazing? Yeah, you always kusama. Yeah, I thought it was Here's what I think I thought it was... Here's what I think. I think it was really cool. And it would have been a lot cooler if it's just like,

yeah, you just walk through all these things and you don't wait 30 minutes to spend 20 seconds in the room. Yep. That took away from it a bit. You and me went at the end of the day and people thinned out and we could just keep going in and staying as long as we wanted in them. So I totally get what you're saying. It was cool though. And I also think like I went with my brother and his family and Scott was kind of like,

I could build one of these in my backyard by next weekend. I want to see Scott's infinity mirror. I thought the same thing. It'd be awesome to build one of those and just like hang out in it for sure. I don't want to take anything away from her though. She's a great artist and it was really neat. I love the, I think the one that was sort of like the Christmas lights was my favorite one. What about the one that's like a kind of like an octagonal box that you look in? That was awesome.

Yeah. It's just like you see your future in the 80s or something like that. Yeah, I got a couple of cool photos, but I largely kept the phone in my pocket and just tried to be in it, man. Yeah, man, I'm with you. So anyway, I met a couple of listeners that just happened to be there,

and they both came up and were like, are you Chuck? And so my brother got a kick out of that as well. Oh, that as well. But this was not one of those people. It just reminded me, because it's a Georgia Tech student. Hey guys, relatively new listener, have probably listened to about 100 episodes so far, tend to hop around. As you can tell, I'm a Georgia Tech student and really hope to run into you guys at some point in Atlanta. Did I mention I go to Georgia Tech? Anyway, I finally sort of had something to write in about. I was listening to the Wendy's Chili podcast.

Suddenly heard the name of a place that sounded very familiar, Kohl's Custard. Remember we mentioned that at the end as a place where there was a finger. Oh yeah. He said it was one of the places where a finger had been found and it shocked me as it is just a tiny little custard shop

that is not a chain on quite expensive beach property in North Carolina I've been as a Georgia Tech student. I was shocked I've been to the place probably five or ten times as a frequent visitor to rightsville beach And then never heard of anyone mentioned this incident Just think is very impressive that a small little store managed stay afloat after such an incident occurred Hearing about the finger incident will not deter me from going again though I just think it's very impressive that a small little store managed to stay afloat after such an incident occurred. Hearing about the Finger incident will not deter me from going again though. And that is from Ethan Lyons. And Ethan, maybe that is exactly why it endured.

It's because people just want that custard so bad. It must be pretty good custard though if you think about it. Yeah, and it didn't make like big national news probably because it's not a chain. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure that's part of it. Plus they also did a better job spinning the PR than Wendy's did. Sure. I'm betting. Well, thanks a lot, Ethan, for letting us know, just kind of bringing that home. Hadn't really envisioned the place where that finger was found in the custard until now, so thanks for that. If you want to get in touch with us and kind of paint a more illustrative picture than we did about something we talked about, we'd love that. You can join us on stuffyousshouldknow.com.

Check out all of our links there. Or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Podcast.