Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery

by Daniel C Taylor

  The big jaw muscle allows this oldest of bears to eat virtually everything—not only carrion, but when it can catch these alive: monkeys, serows, ghorals, wild boar, and even domestic cows. Invading farmers’ fields is something that the nose (and also because it has little brain) cannot resist, especially when maize is ripening. Drawn in by that nose, insects and larvae are also dug out of rotting logs and from the ground, and there is always honey from bee nests (Pooh reminds us). It eats fruits of all sorts, developing in some regions proficiency at tree climbing as it scrounges for nuts.4,5 Anything once living, my bear will eat.

  Reports out of China (where its common name is moon bear) point to the significant amount of time these bears spend in trees, a feature not mentioned in the literature for the Himalaya but supported by its physique—powerful forearms as compared to other Ursus species and relatively weak hindquarters.6 These reports also mention that when in the trees this bear makes nest-like features. It is not clear whether these nests are for sleeping or simply platforms from which they eat.7

  And now about that bipedal walking. From my childhood I’ve seen these bears trained to dance. Men with a bear leashed on a chain went village-to-village. Usually, they led sloth bears, but sometimes it was the Asiatic black bear too. One man had trained his bear such that it would run after him around a circle. This bear was not doing just a few steps on two feet, or bouncing up and down, or shifting from one foot to the other; the man had his Asiatic black bear actually running up to maybe 30 yards.

  As I proceed across the Washington Mall and walk towards the Smithsonian, I realize that in my next round of reading I need to better understand the dynamics of plantigrade feet (giving a platform on which to balance). The plantigrade feature is what allows two-footed walking, where the walker comes down on the hind part of the flexing platform, then goes forward propelled by the hinge at the toes. Being plantigrade improves balance—it gives plasticity at the end of the leg rather than a rigid hoof or cushioned paw of a dog or a cat. It also shortens part of the leg and causes bears and humans to be less powerful runners. To allow this ambulatory dexterity, bones of the foot readjust the five digits plus the bones of the sole.

  How flexible might those digits be in the case of a bear? For a bear that trained its digits through its first years climbing trees, how would those digits splay out when the animal is on the ground walking on snow? Questions drawing my attention, I realize, are anatomical and behavioural, not taxonomic, always going back to the footprint puzzle. Just because the prints look like their maker is walking on two feet does not mean it actually is. Two-footed walking bears are trained. People walk in the snow on two feet because that is all we know. Why would an animal walk on two feet in the snow when it could walk either way? Walking on four feet would distribute its weight and keep it from sinking in so deeply.

  AT THE SMITHSONIAN, I KNOCK ON THE HALF-OPEN DOOR. ‘Ahh, Taylor, the fellow with the Himalayan bears. I’m Dick Thorington.’ A smallish gentleman rises, hand outstretched, and says, ‘Sorry, I wasn’t in the two times you came before. Glad Bill could help. Let’s check your skull.’

  Thorington leads through the hallway maze. ‘Here we are, Selenarctos. One day we’ll rename the case properly and call it Ursus.’ Out slide the wooden trays I’ve come to know, the product of more than a century of collection across 5,000 miles of Asia—bears from the Baluchistan Desert, northern Kashmir, southern Russia, central India, Burma, China, Japan, Taiwan, and not one from Nepal.

  ‘Hmm, general bone configuration similar, occipital crests almost identical, nostrum remarkably the same.’ Thorington holds our skull in his left hand and a large skull from Kashmir in his right. ‘Dentition between the two skulls is identical; molars, premolars, incisors. Yes, it’s all there.’

  ‘Dr Thorington’, I say, offering him a micrometer, ‘measure the molars of our skull and then those of your central Himalayan skulls. The teeth of the smallest Himalayan skulls, even juveniles, will be larger in all dental measurements than our skull. Doesn’t a consistent difference in the size of teeth indicate some sort of separation?’

  Thorington takes the micrometer. ‘You’re right about the size difference. Intriguing though it may be, it doesn’t prove anything. True, bears that are from the central range like yours would be expected to be equal to others in the Himalaya, such as in Kashmir or Assam. Instead, your teeth are like skulls from Taiwan or Iran. You say the habitat where you collected this skull is a pristine jungle. The logical explanation is that your population is nutritionally, not taxonomically, different. It is likely that there is something in or not in the diet that causes the population near Mount Everest to be not as large as one might expect.’

  ‘But that argument does not explain villagers’ claim of two bears, one of which is large, in the same habitat. The Barun Valley is the most pristine valley in the central Himalaya. There is plenty of food. The habitat ranges from subtropical to arctic, bears climb up and down to take their pick of the food depending on what is in season.’

  As we talk Thorington keeps circling back to remind me that everything I am convinced of, and also what Bob and Nick heard, must be treated as hearsay by the curator of mammals for the Smithsonian Institution. A skull can be objectively compared—and the evidence in the skull I have does not appear mysterious.

  What I need, he tells me, is sympatric specimens. To compare speciation, specimens that differ morphologically must be collected from the same habitat. Skulls are needed from the same habitat. If two animals show physical differences and interbreed, they are subspecies; if they show differences and cannot produce offspring, they are considered to differ as species.

  ‘So there is no value to what the villagers say?’ I query.

  Again, his reply is, ‘Villagers are not scientists. What might appear to be two bears to them could be taxonomically one species. Villagers express ideas that are scientifically implausible. In the Himalaya, an example of such would be the Yeti. You must be careful. With this bear you aren’t saying you’ve found the Yeti, are you? Of course not. Villagers use language differently from the way scientists do.’

  I wince, wanting to share our hypothesis. John R. Napier, a predecessor of Thorington at the Smithsonian, has famously debunked the Sasquatch in a book titled Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality. In that book, he writes the following about the Yeti: ‘Something must have made the Shipton footprint. Like Mount Everest, it is there.’8 Napier then advances a theory to explain the Yeti footprint, suggesting that these super human-size footprints that were indelibly there may have been two humans walking on top of each other’s footprints, thereby making Shipton’s enigmatic print.

  As we talk, Thorington encourages further study, saying that there is ‘something about this skull, something I can’t pin down’. He notes that though its physical features are similar to Selenarctos’s, in its feeling it was more delicate. He concludes by saying, ‘If you really think there is something to the village stories, you would be wise to go back into the field. Maybe the skull you have is from the known Ursus, and the new is yet to be collected. Villagers could have mislabelled a skull, especially if they wanted to sell you something.’

  But I know that while skulls have become the taxonomical standard, evidence is growing that species and subspecies could have identical skulls but still differ on the basis of other distinguishing criteria. Could it be, I ask, that a parallel might exist in the case of bears as with Nepalese wren-babblers. Physically, the two species look alike with nearly identical skeletons and plumage, but despite similarities in appearance they are distinct species. One species has a different song, different breeding altitudes, all of which are visible in their behavioural traits. Though physically indistinguishable, wren-babblers turn out to be different species due to their differing DNA—genetic difference is then revealed in their behaviour. Might not two bears look the same and still be different?

  Thorington notes that it is possible, but such an instance in mamm
als is yet to be seen. The only way to substantiate this would be to submit material from both animals for DNA analysis. If I want to make that argument, I need to start doing a DNA analysis of my bears. It is, of course, DNA analysis that has recently changed how bears are categorized in genus and species, a differentiation until now done primarily by skulls. And as he and I talk, reiterating how particularities of occipital crests only become notable when the skulls are placed on sliding trays in white wooden boxes, he graciously offers to write a letter suggesting the legitimacy of my hypothesis. ‘Perhaps a letter from the Smithsonian Institution may help with your fundraising,’ he says.

  OUR FAMILY REACHES HOME THE FOLLOWING MORNING. As Jennifer carries a sleeping Jesse upstairs, I go out to the car to bring in our bags. A deer snorts and crashes down the hill through the blackberry bushes. Washington is 200 miles away, a world feeling more distant than the Milky Way light years above. A breeze rustles the spruces down the slope by the spring through which the deer just took off. Looking skyward, I ask, is it possible to hold back oceanic unfathomables? A sliver of a moon hangs over the ridge called Spruce Bars.

  Thorington has strong grounds for scepticism; it is his role as a curator. Yet he remains open to learning. If it is possible for him, why not others? Is knowledge from science constituted by achievements, or is it a method? Is science a process of future-probing, or is it examining citations sitting as factoids? I look to the stars. Ultimately what is being evolved is the truth, where what is verifiable by one person’s measure can be replicated by another. Ideas speak out from beyond the possible—that can be unique to one person, but it turns into truth when replicated again and again. Our species’ journey is to build one upon another.

  Jesse wakes at 6:30. I carry him out of the bedroom to let Jennifer sleep and start putting away the groceries of last night. Where is that little green suitcase with the skull, pictures, and paws? I check; it’s not out in the car. Then a splash of remembrance: last night, when Jesse was crying, we stopped to get food from the bags to quieten him and I took the case out and set it on the ground by the side of the highway. I must have forgotten to put the suitcase back in.

  Jennifer hears me on the phone asking for the Virginia State Police. She takes Jesse from me and looks out of the window into the wall of fog outside.

  ‘State Police, Woodstock, Virginia? Yes, I lost a suitcase in the Shenandoah Valley along Interstate 81 early this morning when I pulled our car over to attend to my crying toddler. Could you alert troopers to search the road? It looks like an overgrown green briefcase.

  ‘What’s in it? Well, this may surprise you, but there is one bear skull, two bear paws, and 300 photographic slides. All are rare specimens from possibly a new species of bear in the Himalaya mountains. … Yeah, I know it’s hard to believe someone would leave a case like that beside the highway. Oh, you have a little kid? She doesn’t like to ride in her car seat either? Maybe you understand how my son’s screaming got me distracted.’

  As I hang up, Jennifer turns from the window. ‘I can’t believe it. After all we’ve gone through for that skull and slides, they now sit somewhere.’ She starts offering ideas: ‘Did you have our name on the case? Do you remember where we stopped? Did anything in the case identify us? Call newspapers and radio stations throughout the Shenandoah Valley.’

  What’s really in the case are family investments. I can’t look at her, so I walk past the old bed in the living room which, for lack of funds, she has made up with pillows and bolsters to look like a sofa, and step into the morning fog, walking aimlessly over the 400 acres I know so well. Pacing the meadow north of Noah Warner’s barn, a hawthorn tree rears out of the cloud like a bear. I am left with only stories now, without the evidence to give credibility to the stories. The news is out on the New York Times and National Public Radio. It would be one thing if it was just a bear, but if people start suggesting a maybe-Yeti now when the evidence has disappeared, it will be like Tombazi’s Yeti slipping into the bushes as he struggled to put on his telephoto lens.

  Do I race back to the Himalaya and get more skulls? Or, do I hide in the West Virginia mountains? I walk through the morning fog. When I enter our house, Jennifer has a fire crackling in the fireplace and a Mozart Horn Concerto is playing. I call the Woodstock barracks again.

  ‘I’m following up on a report I made this morning regarding a green case lost along Interstate 81.… Oh, it was you I talked to? Any news?’ She says troopers have searched the road from Toms Brook to New Market. I call all the service areas and plead with them to check their dumpsters in case someone picked up the suitcase and then threw it aside upon finding a bear skull, paws, and hundreds of slides.

  Days, then weeks, pass. Mid-March moves to mid-April. I have called radio stations and newspapers. The address on the suitcase is of my parents in Baltimore, so I’ve gotten to know their mailman and UPS delivery man. For the past month someone has always been near our phone.

  AS NEWS OF MY BEAR REACHES THE MEDIA, questions about the sasquatch are raised. In radio and newspaper interviews discussing my loss I can sometimes limit questions to an unknown bear from the Himalaya. But with remarkable frequency questions link the bear skull to the American Yeti: Sasquatch or Bigfoot. (Sasquatch has books exploring its legitimacy; I summarize here one especially delicious sleuthing trail. The Wikipedia entry covers both sides comprehensively.9)

  As best as can be lifted from legend, Native American tribes had a belief in a man of the forests. The name ‘Sasquatch’ comes from a Canadian newspaperman in the 1920s who brought this name from the Halkomelem nation.10 In America, Daniel Boone claimed killing a 10-foot tall man in the forests of Kentucky. But a modern believing public became convinced following a short film of a beast loping along a riverbank on 20 October 1967 in Bluff Creek, California. A string of discoveries followed throughout North America, particularly the Pacific Northwest.

  The Patterson film was near-definitive evidence for four decades despite the book by the Smithsonian’s John Napier. The film shows a 7-foot tall hairy hominoid (apparently female—it seems to have breasts) moving in front of fallen timbers. Footprints in the sand were extraordinarily long: 14 inches. Established academics, including Jeffrey Meldrum from Idaho State University, Grover Krantz from Washington State University, and Bernard Heuvelmans (the ‘Father of Cryptozoology’), gave credence-building interpretations to the film.

  But thirty-seven years after that film, and two decades after I lost my suitcase, in 2004 the film’s authenticity started to unravel. Among the cracks in the story, the investigative reporter Greg Long published The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story, bringing forward the history of Roger Patterson and his larger history of falsification.11 Accompanying Patterson that day (20 October) was Bob Gimlin, who also witnessed the whole sequence, and across the years had corroborated what had supposedly happened. But Long found other people, and finally Bob Heironimus. The following quotations from Long’s book summarize what Long found:

  Heironimus hunched forward, put his hands on the table, and then stared straight into my eyes. He had young, fleshy features, soft ruddy cheeks, and a fleshy jowl.… He cleared his throat, ‘I’m here to tell you’, he said in a soft, country voice, ‘that I was the man in the Bigfoot suit’.12

  We dismounted and unloaded the sack. I had to kind of sit down and put it (the suit) on. It was stiff from about here (he gestured from his waist up). They kind of helped me up and put the top on. Roger said, ‘Just walk over and stand there in that section, and when we get ready to film, you just start walkin’.13

  Then Jeff Long speaks about the interview he did when he filmed Heironimus in which the latter mimicked what he had done years earlier.

  I centered him in the viewfinder (of the camera). ‘OK, Bob! Get ready … set … go!’ Bob walked with long, purposeful steps, knees bent, arms swinging in long vigorous arcs, shoulders slumped forward, face toward the ground. The puff sleeves of his jacket added mass to his upper body. A sudden chill ri
ppled down my nape. I blurted out excitedly to Pat [Long’s colleague], ‘I think he wore the Bigfoot suit!’14

  In a separate interview Long talks to Heironimus’s mother who had stumbled on the mysterious Bigfoot suit hidden inside the car. ‘Well, after he got back, the next morning I was goin’ to put some boxes in the trunk to go pick up some apples, and when I opened the trunk, here was this black thing layin’ there, and I stepped back like that … then I discovered it was just—just the suit’, she smiled.15

  Then came this discovery by Long who, on 26 November 2003, called up Phillip Morris, a costume-maker and magician, who said:

  When I saw the film on television. I knew within seconds that I was looking at my suit. I knew it! That suit was the style of my gorilla suit’.16

  ‘Wow’, I [Long] said. ‘So, Patterson sent you a check?’ Morris answered, ‘No, a postal money order. He also sent money for shipping. So I took one of my gorilla suits and we shipped it to him. … Then, not long after he would have received the suit, I got a call from him. Patterson said, ‘I can see the zipper in the back,’ I told him, ‘Just brush the fur down over the zipper’. Then Roger wanted to know how to make the arms longer.17

  In the years since Long’s book, a larger discussion of the film unfolded on the Internet. Parallel debunking came from Kal K. Korff who did a meticulous analysis, finding a series of anomalies; most importantly, inconsistencies between the feet on the animal when the movie was made and the footprints photographed separately that were shown as the ones made by the beast.18

  The Patterson film had stood as the equivalent to the Yeti’s footprints in the snow: made and never explained. As the film got debunked, this evidence lost its validity. For me, losing my suitcase similarly felt like having lost my credibility. For years I had stayed loyal to the footprint quest, trying to avoid crossing the line and believing that a real Yeti, though tempting to believe in, might really exist. And finally, when I had an answer in hand for what might make those footprints, that answer slipped away just when the evidence was beginning to be presented for analysis.