Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over
Speaker 1: there somewhere over there, And this is stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: the Continuing Cryptozoology Edition. Oh, this finishes it, right. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. We've done Bigfoot, Locknest monster yetti.
Speaker 1: Well you haven't done like, um, moth Man. That's the Chupacabra. Chupacabra.
Speaker 1: That's a big one too. Yeah. This slender Man, Slenderman
Speaker 1: is more Internet folklore than anything. Uh did we do
Speaker 1: that one? Or did we think about it and not
Speaker 1: do it? The ladder of those two? If I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: I said it stinks or something. Yeah, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: hurt my feelings. Oh my in I think it was.
Speaker 1: I think we could do slender Man now, it was
Speaker 1: just so early on that Um it was very thin.
Speaker 1: Now I think it would be more robust. Yeah that's right. Um, well,
Speaker 1: today we're talking about the Yeti, which is not slender
Speaker 1: Depending on which yetti you're talking about, Chuck, it's either
Speaker 1: enormous and like eight feet tall, covered in gray or
Speaker 1: white or maybe sometimes reddish hair, weighing four pounds easily
Speaker 1: or actually it is kind of slender. It could be
Speaker 1: basically what amounts to a wild hippie, basically a somebody
Speaker 1: who likes to grub roots out of the ground and
Speaker 1: lets out a squeal or a cry every once in
Speaker 1: a while just to I guess know that they're alive.
Speaker 1: And um. There's really two competing versions of what those
Speaker 1: of us in the Western world would would inc was
Speaker 1: the Yeti. But the one we're really talking about is
Speaker 1: the first one, what we also think of as the
Speaker 1: abominable Snowman. How tall it was, hippie rob uh? He
Speaker 1: was average like five something, I guess, like high five.
Speaker 1: He was a little shorter than me. Yeah right, he
Speaker 1: was not. He was not the uh. He was not
Speaker 1: the the Yeti of legend as far as I know.
Speaker 1: He could be now though well I don't know. It
Speaker 1: just sounded an awful lot like him, kind of test
Speaker 1: he opened in the mountains grubbing for roots, yep, covered
Speaker 1: in dirt and with wild, crazy hair. So I think
Speaker 1: we should just tell, like, if you don't know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, this is the um the legendary beasts
Speaker 1: that lives in Asia. Yeah, around the Himalayas typically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's known as Asia's Bigfoot, or maybe Bigfoot is
Speaker 1: known as North America's Yetti. I don't know, Uh, I
Speaker 1: guess Yetti came first, right, Yeah, I think yet he's
Speaker 1: been around with the Sherpa of Tibet for a very
Speaker 1: long time. Yeah. And that's sort of the deal of this.
Speaker 1: The origin story of this thing is the Yetti has
Speaker 1: been told um for many, many years in traditional stories
Speaker 1: in that area. Um, there's a there was someone named
Speaker 1: um Shiva dot Call that collected a bunch of these
Speaker 1: stories in a book called folk Tales of Sherpa and Yetti,
Speaker 1: and all of them kind of figured the same way,
Speaker 1: which was whether it's a story called the Annihilation of
Speaker 1: the Yetti uh, in which this is pretty good. It's
Speaker 1: about sherpas seeking revenge on a tormenting group of Yettis
Speaker 1: this sounds like something that should be on like the
Speaker 1: Sci Fi channel. I would be very surprised if it wasn't.
Speaker 1: But all of these stories basically have the same moral
Speaker 1: um message at the end, which is because it's sort
Speaker 1: of like a grim's fairy tale. Like be careful out
Speaker 1: on the woods. Actually, yeah exactly. I think it serves
Speaker 1: the exact same purpose to like in the Grimm's fairy Tales,
Speaker 1: and I thought the same thing. Um, you know, there's
Speaker 1: witches that live in candy houses, so don't go wandering
Speaker 1: off in the woods kids, because you'll end up getting eaten.
Speaker 1: For little kids in Tibet, it was don't wander off
Speaker 1: into the Tibetan plateau or the YETI will get you,
Speaker 1: and you will all sorts of terrible things will happen
Speaker 1: to you, which is funny because they are all sorts
Speaker 1: of real things that could kill you in the Tibetan plateau. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why I think what they were saying was, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just be like, look out for the bears.
Speaker 1: You can. Kid will be like, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: can see a brash kid being like, no bear, everybody
Speaker 1: knows what a bear is. All rustle a bear any
Speaker 1: day of the week. And then you know, along the
Speaker 1: way it gets into a drinking contest with Marion from
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones right, right exactly. That was one of the
Speaker 1: best scenes in the history of film. Yeah, I think so,
Speaker 1: And Tibetan kids tend to agree with me too. But
Speaker 1: before we move on, I want to say one thing,
Speaker 1: that annihilation of the Yetti. Keep keep that in the
Speaker 1: back of your mind. And the story was that, like,
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of Yetti that, um, we're hanging
Speaker 1: around and the Sherpa we're sick of them hanging around.
Speaker 1: So the sherp but basically through a YETI party and
Speaker 1: got drunk and fought with each other to kind of
Speaker 1: provide an example to the Yetti. Hey, you should get
Speaker 1: drunk and fight with each other too, in the hopes
Speaker 1: of the Yeti would destroy each other. It didn't work,
Speaker 1: and the Yetti all managed to escape, except for one
Speaker 1: who was supposedly killed by a a llama, one of
Speaker 1: the Buddhist monks in the area. That's part of the story.
Speaker 1: That's the end. That's the annihilation of the Yetti story.
Speaker 1: I didn't know a Lama figured in. And really, annihilation
Speaker 1: is kind of a strong word if you think about it,
Speaker 1: because if you just killed one out of I think
Speaker 1: two and forty Yeti, it's hardly annihilation. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: I think so too. Uh So, throughout history, these legends
Speaker 1: have been pervasive in the region so much so that
Speaker 1: supposedly the great Alexander or Alexander the Great, I'm that's
Speaker 1: sure why I did that. When he came through town
Speaker 1: and conquered the Indus Valley, he said, Uh, I can
Speaker 1: see one of your famous I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: what Alexander the Great sounded like. No, No, what did
Speaker 1: ancient Roman sound like? I was he Roman? I think
Speaker 1: he was Greek? That was he? Cheeze? How about really
Speaker 1: screwed that up? Usa? I knew that do a German accent.
Speaker 1: I'm just slow. I'm just gonna leave. No, han, hank,
Speaker 1: tight chuck, you can rebound. Yeah. Why why did I
Speaker 1: think he was Roman in that Greek? Well, because the
Speaker 1: Romans like to pretend they were Greek themselves. I'm not
Speaker 1: firing on all cylinders. But regardless of my bad accent,
Speaker 1: or maybe I should just edit back in and say
Speaker 1: that was my Greek accent. There you go. Uh he said,
Speaker 1: I want to see a YETI and they the local
Speaker 1: locals that were like, you know, we totally would do that. However,
Speaker 1: um that you can't get them down this low, and
Speaker 1: you'd have to hike really high up in those mountains.
Speaker 1: And I know you're not down with that, so sorry, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I guess Alexander the Great was like, I'm board,
Speaker 1: I can't believe we're still talking about this. Give me
Speaker 1: some wine. Pretty gotten a drinking contest, and that was that.
Speaker 1: So the yett he continued on in in Scherpa tradition
Speaker 1: in Tibetan, Nepal, and Bhutan, but um in the West
Speaker 1: it kind of disappeared from view until the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And so remember these are tall tales that the the
Speaker 1: Scherpa teach their kids, although there is supposedly some I
Speaker 1: guess general belief as well, but I can't I can't
Speaker 1: quite penetrate it. But just imagine that it was just
Speaker 1: strictly tall tales Serpa people told their kids. Then Westerners
Speaker 1: came in and said, what is this you're talking about?
Speaker 1: Tell us about this and just bought the whole thing
Speaker 1: hook line and sinker. Yeah, and things really took for him.
Speaker 1: In nine there's a journalist named Henry Newman. He did
Speaker 1: an interview with some British explorers. And this is a
Speaker 1: time of great exploration, especially from the British. Uh these
Speaker 1: sort of uh these, I guess uh, Indiana Jones, like
Speaker 1: mountaineers who would go all over the world in search
Speaker 1: of these you know, jungles and mountains in church of
Speaker 1: crazy beasts and treasures and things like that. So, uh,
Speaker 1: he interviewed some of these guys and they said, you
Speaker 1: know what, we found these huge footprints up in the
Speaker 1: mountains and the locals there. I guess Serpa said, because
Speaker 1: with in arpa the plural sharpa didn't me did from it?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Um, that was a good episode,
Speaker 1: by the way, everyone, it was go back and listen
Speaker 1: to that one. What was the title of Warm, Friendly Living, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's I think what tending Nor said. So great.
Speaker 1: So they said that their guides are Sherpa guides. Um
Speaker 1: called them mito kangm which the translation, the real translation
Speaker 1: is a little awkward man bear snowman. Right, but Newman
Speaker 1: confused all that. He got the snowman part right, but
Speaker 1: he translated that first part to mean mato m e
Speaker 1: t o h two mean filthy or dirty, and then
Speaker 1: he changed that on his own to the word abominable,
Speaker 1: and that's the way we get the abominable snowman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like, I don't like filthy Snowman. I'm going
Speaker 1: to change the name that I've already gotten wrong, right
Speaker 1: and turned it into abominable Snowman. Yeah, he really great journalist,
Speaker 1: But it's fascinating that you can trace it back to
Speaker 1: this one dummy. That's the whole the abominable Snowman. That's
Speaker 1: where it came from, was this one guy, and that
Speaker 1: obviously just completely captured the attention of the rest of
Speaker 1: the world when he he wrote this, because like this
Speaker 1: was not just like, oh yeah, they heard about an
Speaker 1: abominable snowman. It was these these explorers found tracks and
Speaker 1: they're sure, but guides told them the trucks belonged to
Speaker 1: this abominable snowman. Therefore, there are abominable snowmen living in
Speaker 1: the Himalayas. And the explorer who was who led that
Speaker 1: particular expedition was Charles Howard Berry Um Howard Hyphen Berry
Speaker 1: b U R y and Um. Apparently he and Newman
Speaker 1: were really big into promoting the idea of an abominable
Speaker 1: snowman or men living in the Himalayas, and that it
Speaker 1: just being like this giant, huge creature with shaggy hair
Speaker 1: and very much akin to Bigfoot. But if you look
Speaker 1: at the descriptions, the aditional descriptions of the YETI they're
Speaker 1: they're much smaller and not nearly as huge as um.
Speaker 1: The Westerners kind of immediately made it out to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was one description, one of the earlier written descriptions
Speaker 1: from two There was a researcher named Mira Shackley, and
Speaker 1: I believe that she got this information from uh, two
Speaker 1: hikers that reported seeing the yetti. Uh, and this is
Speaker 1: what they said. The height was not much less than
Speaker 1: eight feet so tall for sure, but it's not like
Speaker 1: it was ten ft tall. Uh. The head were the heads,
Speaker 1: because there were two of them, were described as squarish,
Speaker 1: and the ears must lie close to the skull because
Speaker 1: there was no projection from the silhouette against the snow.
Speaker 1: The shoulders sloped slowly down to a powerful chest covered
Speaker 1: by reddish brown hair which formed a close body fur
Speaker 1: mixed with long, straight hairs hanging downward about the size
Speaker 1: and bill to a small man. The head covered with
Speaker 1: long hair, but the face and chest not very hairy
Speaker 1: at all. This this all sounds like they always describe
Speaker 1: him as or it is bipedal right, means you know,
Speaker 1: walking upright, right. But if you if you go back
Speaker 1: and look at that description and how detailed it was.
Speaker 1: Those hikers who gave the description said that they they
Speaker 1: saw they saw all this from observing two black specks
Speaker 1: moving across the snow about a quarter mile below them.
Speaker 1: And yet they could see that it had a thick
Speaker 1: undercoat and like a very long, hairy overcoat and that
Speaker 1: was reddish, and like that's just just basically perfect abominable
Speaker 1: snowman sighting. Yeah, but but it's one of like many
Speaker 1: like after after that Howard Berry expedition came back in
Speaker 1: and Newman broadcasts to the world, people started going to
Speaker 1: the Himalayas and droves, and they weren't just necessarily looking
Speaker 1: for the abominable Stowe Man. Everest was there, and everybody
Speaker 1: knew Everest was there, and a lot of people wanted
Speaker 1: to be the first one to summit Everest, the first Westerner,
Speaker 1: i should say, to summit Everest, so that while a
Speaker 1: lot of them were in the area, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we'll look for the abominable snowman while we're here too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some pretty legendary mountaineers um and granted these are
Speaker 1: not like zoologist or anything, but their respected men in
Speaker 1: their field, people like Reinhold Messner and one Sir Edmund
Speaker 1: Hillary both searched for evidence of the Eddy while they
Speaker 1: were hiking. Uh and Messner even wrote a book called
Speaker 1: My Quest for the Yetty, Confronting the Himalayas Deepest Mystery.
Speaker 1: But I mean, well, well, we'll save the big reveal
Speaker 1: to the end or the third act of this show.
Speaker 1: Okay is your third act? Yeah, there's gotta be Okay,
Speaker 1: we're in big trouble. If there's not, well, why don't
Speaker 1: we take a break and then we'll come back and
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about a couple more of these
Speaker 1: reported sightings. Let's do it all right, Well, now we're
Speaker 1: on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn
Speaker 1: a thing or two from Josh Damp Chuck stuff you
Speaker 1: should know, all right, to Chuck? Okay, Chuck. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we've we've started to get some sightings from expeditions that
Speaker 1: are going to Everest and just hanging around the Himalayas
Speaker 1: um and then I think in nineteen one, something really
Speaker 1: big happened. One of those explorers, Eric Shipton, took a
Speaker 1: photograph of a track that to this day looks pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1: Actually yeah. I mean this is again it's not like
Speaker 1: hard evidence, but this is a very famous otto. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing this when I was a kid, and like,
Speaker 1: I guess it was probably the Guinness or Ripley's Believe
Speaker 1: It or Not or something. It was Time Life books
Speaker 1: for me, was it? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I remember that.
Speaker 1: It's a very famous picture of a like a a
Speaker 1: pick because you know pick axe yeah, used for scale, Yeah,
Speaker 1: right next to it. And I remember that very distinctly.
Speaker 1: When I saw this picture, I was like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And then when you look at it, you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: that that doesn't look quite right. That's a really weird track.
Speaker 1: It's it looks like an elongated human foot, but rather
Speaker 1: than a left toe. Um, it's it's got, it's kind
Speaker 1: of bulbous and weird. It doesn't look like the other toes,
Speaker 1: and it certainly doesn't look like what a human toe
Speaker 1: should look like. And it's also huge. I think it
Speaker 1: was measured about thirteen inches, which is a pretty typical
Speaker 1: size for a YETI track from what I understand over
Speaker 1: the ages. But the thing about it is it is
Speaker 1: a nice, crisp, fresh track. And the other thing about
Speaker 1: and this is what really captured the attention of the world.
Speaker 1: Eric Shipton was not known to be a particularly fraudulent person.
Speaker 1: He was a very respected explorer and mountaineer. He knew
Speaker 1: the area well and as a guy who has tracked
Speaker 1: Yettie his whole life. Um, I believe his name is
Speaker 1: Daniel Taylor. Um. Daniel Taylor put it. If if Shipton
Speaker 1: is coming back with a picture of a track, you
Speaker 1: just you know, it's a real track. It's not faked,
Speaker 1: it's not a hoax. So the question was what was it?
Speaker 1: And this is one and it hit the world. That picture,
Speaker 1: that track hit the world like the surgeon's photo of
Speaker 1: the Lockness Monster hit the world at back in ninety three.
Speaker 1: It just became like proof to people who believe in
Speaker 1: the Yettie around the world that the Yetie definitely exists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, it was really Um what
Speaker 1: what made it different than other photos? That it was
Speaker 1: so sharp, it was a really good picture. Um. And
Speaker 1: that that little um toe thing basically looked like a
Speaker 1: thumb and it just, you know, it looked odd. But
Speaker 1: this this Daniel Taylor guy, he actually when I started
Speaker 1: reading that article, I thought, oh boy, this crack pot.
Speaker 1: But he actually turned out to be a pretty cool
Speaker 1: guy because he'd spent a lot of his life looking
Speaker 1: for the Yeti. Went over there, even met with the
Speaker 1: King of Nepal, and the King of Nepal said, well,
Speaker 1: if you want to go like to the wildest place
Speaker 1: and the most you know, remote place in our land,
Speaker 1: go to Barroon b a r U n this Baroun valley.
Speaker 1: And he went there and he looked around and he
Speaker 1: uh did not find a yeti. But what he did
Speaker 1: do was ended up helping to work towards conservation of
Speaker 1: that area, which was kind of a nice silver lining
Speaker 1: to his story was he got there and he was like,
Speaker 1: this is of the most beautiful places on Earth, right
Speaker 1: and one of the greatest wilderness wildernesses I've ever been to.
Speaker 1: He realized it wasn't protected and that like Chinese loggers
Speaker 1: were infringing on one side and farmers were infringing on
Speaker 1: the other. So he kind of spun it into like
Speaker 1: good work doing conservation work in that area, which was
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Yeah, you got it turned into a
Speaker 1: national park in Nepal. It's a protected area now, which
Speaker 1: is significant. Have you seen pictures of the valley it's astounding.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life, and it was just being used because
Speaker 1: the people living there like, well, we need this land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful, but we can't afford to preserve it because
Speaker 1: a lot of people around here live on fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: a year um. So they were just making use of
Speaker 1: it however they could. And he he came in with
Speaker 1: the government said no, no, no more of that, get
Speaker 1: out of here. This is protected now. But it is
Speaker 1: gorgeous and his his he had actually been raised there.
Speaker 1: Daniel Taylor's grandparents were miss canaries in the Himalayas, and
Speaker 1: his parents kind of took over his grandparents work, so
Speaker 1: he was raised in the Himalayas. So he'd been looking
Speaker 1: for the eddies whole life. But when he went to
Speaker 1: the baron Um, he feels like he found the answer
Speaker 1: to that track that it was a kind of tree bear.
Speaker 1: But there's there's a big problem with that. The Barun
Speaker 1: Valley is a subtropical rainforest, so a tree bear living
Speaker 1: in there wouldn't survive very very well in the snow
Speaker 1: and the Tibettan Tibetan plateau, you know, ten ten thousand
Speaker 1: or more feet higher up the mountain, So it doesn't
Speaker 1: really solve the mystery much, no, but his notion that
Speaker 1: it could have been a tree bear makes a little
Speaker 1: more sense with these tracks, because a tree bear does
Speaker 1: have a um I don't I don't know if you
Speaker 1: call it a thumb, but some sort of opposable digit
Speaker 1: to make climbing easier, and that that would at least
Speaker 1: explain this weird thumblike thing in these prints. It would.
Speaker 1: So he's got like half of the thing explained. The
Speaker 1: other half is what the heck was that tree bears,
Speaker 1: the subtropical rainforest tree bear doing up in the mountains
Speaker 1: of the Himalayas, you know what I'm saying, Like in
Speaker 1: the snow above the snow line, I guess, is what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say. But the other thing about that
Speaker 1: um that shipped in photo that became world famous for
Speaker 1: the yetti um was that, like the track itself, was
Speaker 1: very crisp. And there's a guy named Benjamin Radford who's
Speaker 1: a skeptic who has written a lot about the Yetti
Speaker 1: um and in particular how how difficult obtaining yetti tracks
Speaker 1: could be, or actually, more to the point how easy
Speaker 1: it would be to confuse the normal animals tracks or
Speaker 1: something weird because of the fact that the snow is
Speaker 1: a terrible medium for tracks, because like say a bear
Speaker 1: walks through an area, leaves some tracks in the snow.
Speaker 1: The next morning, as the sun comes up and it
Speaker 1: hits the tracks and it shoots all that heat on
Speaker 1: this under that track, it starts to melt the sides,
Speaker 1: maybe elongate it, maybe make the toes look splayed, And
Speaker 1: it just doesn't resemble a bear track anymore at all.
Speaker 1: It looks like something weird and and and um not
Speaker 1: previously known, like an entirely new species. That's the thing
Speaker 1: about the shift in photograph that captured everyone's attention. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look like that at all. It looks sharp new,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look melted at all. The edges are clean
Speaker 1: and crisp. That's why I think really kind of struck everybody.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a melted, mangled track. It was like
Speaker 1: a new track by something that was not immediately identifiable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So there have been other photographs through the years.
Speaker 1: Uh as you know, supposed evidence in hiker name Anthony
Speaker 1: Wooldridge UM said there's a YETI over there, he's about
Speaker 1: five feet away, and uh, he saw a bunch of
Speaker 1: tracks in the snow that looked like that was going
Speaker 1: that way, and he took some photographs that were proven genuine.
Speaker 1: But I think by genuine that just means they weren't faked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I That's how I understand it, because wasn't
Speaker 1: this the photo that they said, actually those are just
Speaker 1: rocks standing up, Yeah, like rock outcropping or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy was also a respected mountaineer and explorer in
Speaker 1: New the area really well. And so when he came
Speaker 1: back with this photo and they said this photo wasn't faked,
Speaker 1: it's not been doctored. People people listen to him too.
Speaker 1: But it just turns out he was wrong. This photo
Speaker 1: of rocks has not been doctored exactly. That's that's ultimately
Speaker 1: what they were saying. Because another expedition went back to
Speaker 1: the same spot the next year and we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's those rocks over there. And even even in
Speaker 1: his account, um, that guy what was his name, Woodridge,
Speaker 1: Woodridge says like, yeah, they just stood there motionless, Yeah
Speaker 1: they were they were still his boulders up brave boulders.
Speaker 1: But the other thing is he swore that there were
Speaker 1: tracks leading up to it, so he he seemed to
Speaker 1: think that that they really were there. But from what
Speaker 1: I understand, he was earnest in his report. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like a fraud or a hoax or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And I think he was a little a little red
Speaker 1: faced afterward. Probably. Yeah, they even made a movie about
Speaker 1: it called Ernest Goes Hiking. All right, Ernest Saves Christmas
Speaker 1: with the Abominable Snowman. I'll bet Ernest did save Christmas
Speaker 1: in one movie. I guarantee there was a movie called
Speaker 1: Ernest Saves Christmas. I think I think there was right now.
Speaker 1: The only one I'm a d percent sure of his
Speaker 1: Ernest Goes to Camp. I never saw any of those.
Speaker 1: My family saw that movie in the theater Top Dollar,
Speaker 1: Top Dollar, which was three dollars. Yeah, I guess, I
Speaker 1: hope so at the time, which is surprising because my
Speaker 1: mom used to sneak in bolt candy from like the
Speaker 1: little store across the way from the movie theater in
Speaker 1: Southwick Mall. Yeah, we know that move in our family.
Speaker 1: It works works really well. Uh So, over the years,
Speaker 1: there have been not only things like, oh, look footprints,
Speaker 1: or hey, look at that rock across the valley. Uh.
Speaker 1: There there have been Uh. I don't want to call
Speaker 1: it evidence, but um alleged evidence brought forward by legitimate scientists. Uh,
Speaker 1: and people like Sir Edmund Hillary, like he brought back
Speaker 1: a scalp and said he didn't say I scalped the Yetti,
Speaker 1: but he said, hey, I think this is a Yettie scalp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was trying to fool anyone, though, was he? No? No, No,
Speaker 1: he was supposedly kind of a casual believer in it.
Speaker 1: He'd been sent on a Yetti expedition by New World
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia years before, and he came back with a a
Speaker 1: Yeti skull cap that he'd gotten from a monastery in Nepal.
Speaker 1: They had a Yetti skull cap and a hand, a
Speaker 1: Yetie hand and mummified Jetti hand. And what's crazy is
Speaker 1: the Yeti skull cap was supposedly the the scalp of
Speaker 1: the one Jetti that had been killed during the annihilation
Speaker 1: of the Yetti story. So he brings it back. I
Speaker 1: think it wasn't that he was gullible, And I also
Speaker 1: I'm sure it wasn't that it was. He was a hoaxter.
Speaker 1: He was the kind of scientific person who kept his
Speaker 1: mind open until the evidence was in. Man, can you
Speaker 1: imagine a time when an encyclopedia company would send Sir
Speaker 1: Edmund Hillary out on assignment? Like, how great is that?
Speaker 1: I know that was the mid twentieth century. It was
Speaker 1: a great, great time to be alive in the way
Speaker 1: of wonder and curiosity. Uh so, Yeah, he comes back
Speaker 1: with a scalp and it turns out they did a
Speaker 1: little research and it was a It's an animal called
Speaker 1: a sero. It's kind of like a goat. You have
Speaker 1: some poor serro got scalped. Yeah, but that happened a
Speaker 1: lot like, Um, there was this finger and this is
Speaker 1: a pretty good story or um that actor Jimmy Stewart,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, was involved in smuggling out supposed
Speaker 1: yetti finger. Yeah, from from again from a monastery. I
Speaker 1: believe it might have been the same monastery. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: wouldn't he just on vacation there and just got sort
Speaker 1: of mixed up in this plan? Yeah. We gotta mention
Speaker 1: Tom Slick, the oil man, Yeah, because he figures into
Speaker 1: this story. Uh. He was a rich guy who uh
Speaker 1: he was one of these dudes is sort of adventuring
Speaker 1: rich guys. That was like, I'm a Yeti hunter for
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, and when when you say hunter, like
Speaker 1: he was a hunter. His entire point to finding the
Speaker 1: yet he was to shoot and kill it and to
Speaker 1: take it back and have it stuffed. And um, the
Speaker 1: government Nepaul had a real problem with that and basically said,
Speaker 1: your expedition is is banned. Nobody can come in here
Speaker 1: and kill the Yetti. And apparently the U. S. State
Speaker 1: Department got in touch with Nepal and said, hey, by
Speaker 1: the way, we have the same feeling. We we have
Speaker 1: a policy of not killing Yeti either. So apparently with that, um,
Speaker 1: Tom Slick's expedition was allowed back in on the basis
Speaker 1: that they would never try to kill the Yeti except
Speaker 1: in self defense. And I guess later on, when he
Speaker 1: became interested in bigfoot, he had a change of heart
Speaker 1: and he stopped decided he stopped hunting to kill and
Speaker 1: started hunting just to find and maybe capture on photograph
Speaker 1: and that was it. And that his change of heart
Speaker 1: um change the way that bigfoot is searched for to
Speaker 1: this day, and the Yeti now much more. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: much more peaceful search. He was like the last of
Speaker 1: the UM big game hunters involved in like trying to
Speaker 1: find unidentified animals again to kill them so they could
Speaker 1: be stuffed and kept at the National Geographic Society or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, I mean, and that was a
Speaker 1: big thing that um Daniels guy talks about, just these
Speaker 1: legends and history and how quote unquote science back then
Speaker 1: was in the Victorian age were we're because you know,
Speaker 1: all these tales of Tarzan and these fantastic beasts. People
Speaker 1: would just these rich people would go into the jungle
Speaker 1: and search for animals that no one had ever seen
Speaker 1: before so they could shoot and kill them and bring
Speaker 1: them back and say, look at this weird thing, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean a lot of people like don't really
Speaker 1: like you. You point to the guys who were out
Speaker 1: there like doing the hunting and killing and the exploitation
Speaker 1: and all of that, but they were very frequently working
Speaker 1: at the behest of museums, sure, who for a very
Speaker 1: long time got to pass even though they were the
Speaker 1: source of the um those expeditions and the funders of
Speaker 1: those expeditions, and the reason people were out there in
Speaker 1: the first place was to go get specimens for the
Speaker 1: museum's collections and ostensibly to study or whatever, but it
Speaker 1: was to study them dead. And I think probably because
Speaker 1: there wasn't really any reliable way to ship a live
Speaker 1: specimen back in a lot of ways, but also there
Speaker 1: there was um so I think Tom Slick kind of
Speaker 1: represented the the end of that and at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the new, this new era of much more peaceful
Speaker 1: exploration and expeditions. Yeah, And I don't want to leave
Speaker 1: everyone hanging on Jimmy Stewart. He was only he was
Speaker 1: on vacation I think in Calcutta, got mixed up in
Speaker 1: this uh in this yetie finger helps smuggle it back
Speaker 1: and they finally did DNA testing about seven or eight
Speaker 1: years ago and they said, oh, this is a human finger, right,
Speaker 1: But I mean for a while there they weren't sure.
Speaker 1: And I guess Tom Slick was friends had a common
Speaker 1: friend h with Jimmy Stewart, and Jimmy Stewart happened to
Speaker 1: be in India, and so Tom Slick's agents and Nepaul
Speaker 1: managed to get this finger to Jimmy Stewart, who agreed
Speaker 1: to smuggle it out on the basis that Jimmy Stewart's
Speaker 1: luggage is not gonna get searched. And Jimmy Stewart's smuggled
Speaker 1: a jettie finger out of India and to the UK
Speaker 1: for it to be studied. I'll go go, go ahead
Speaker 1: and put the finger in my bag. So ho big
Speaker 1: you're gonna do Jimmy Stewart Eddie. In my head, I
Speaker 1: was like, Jimmy Stewart, can I blow that off? You did? Man?
Speaker 1: You nailed it? All right. Well, let's take another break
Speaker 1: and we'll come back and talk more about DNA and
Speaker 1: how that has figured in uh in the search of
Speaker 1: more recent years. Right after this, well, now we're on
Speaker 1: the road driving in your truck. Want to learn a
Speaker 1: thing or two from Josh Damn Chuck. Stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: all right, Chuck, so check you remember in the Lochness episode,
Speaker 1: the Lockness Monster episode, we talked about how there's like
Speaker 1: a new search going on where they're sampling the lock
Speaker 1: itself and examining it for d NA UM. Apparently, applying
Speaker 1: modern genetics and genetic analysis to cryptozoology is like the
Speaker 1: next chapter and rather than saying like, oh, well that's
Speaker 1: say for us, are are big? Fraud? Is over with?
Speaker 1: Cryptozoologists are like, awesome, good, we finally have the tools
Speaker 1: now to find out to get to the bottom of
Speaker 1: this stuff and to actually discover new new specimens or
Speaker 1: new um species um. So there seemed to be quite
Speaker 1: happy about it and quite excited, although the there a
Speaker 1: lot of their beliefs hang in the balance and could
Speaker 1: just be have the legs cut out from under him
Speaker 1: by science. That's science wins. In two thousan, there's a
Speaker 1: geneticist at Oxford named Brian Sykes who said, all right, yetti, Uh,
Speaker 1: holders of Yetti pieces, send them to me. If you
Speaker 1: have any Yetti hair, Yetti teeth, Yetti tissue, send it
Speaker 1: Oxford University. And he got it. He got fifty seven samples. Uh.
Speaker 1: They picked thirty six of those to do some DNA
Speaker 1: analysis on and uh most of these turned out to
Speaker 1: be animals that we all know, like bears and cows
Speaker 1: and horses um. At the time though that he found
Speaker 1: a couple of samples from Bhutan in India that he said,
Speaker 1: we're a percent match for jaw bones of a polar
Speaker 1: bear from the Pleistocene era. Yeah, and this kind of
Speaker 1: excited people because this may have been I mean not
Speaker 1: the Yetti. But this may have been sort of a combination,
Speaker 1: a hybrid of a polar bear and a brown bear,
Speaker 1: because this is when they were diverging genetically, and that
Speaker 1: in itself would be a pretty cool find. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be a new type of bear that was
Speaker 1: a direct descended from bears that went extinct about forty
Speaker 1: years ago, and it would be a type of polar bear.
Speaker 1: There aren't polar bears in the Himalayas. There's black bears
Speaker 1: as brown bears, there's him Alaan bears, there's tree bears,
Speaker 1: but there's not polar bears. So and the fact that
Speaker 1: like he accidentally found this by putting out this call
Speaker 1: for for samples of Yeti or Bigfoot or whoever, Um
Speaker 1: just made it all the all the sweeter that like
Speaker 1: he had just accidentally discovered a new type of polar
Speaker 1: bear living in the Himalayas. Yeah, but sadly that was
Speaker 1: not even the case. Um. Some more scientists came along later.
Speaker 1: They did re analysis, and I think what they landed
Speaker 1: on was, you know, unfortunately these uh, I think you're
Speaker 1: getting a bad reading because of a damaged sample. What
Speaker 1: these really are are just brown bears. They're brown bears. Yes,
Speaker 1: some other people followed up because, um, it's not like
Speaker 1: it was any kind of hoax or anything like that. Wike, Um,
Speaker 1: it's white, right. His last name is Wike Pikes Sikes.
Speaker 1: Sikes is like a leading expert on um analyzing mitochondrial DNA,
Speaker 1: wrote the book The Seven Daughters of Eve, which kind
Speaker 1: of introduced the world to genetic analysis through m M
Speaker 1: T d n A. But um, he just made a
Speaker 1: mistake or leapt to a conclusion. I think is the
Speaker 1: the the thing that everyone's being too polite to to
Speaker 1: maybe say. But he he shared all of his data
Speaker 1: on gen Bank, which is this huge database, and other
Speaker 1: people came and analyzed and said, now it's just regular bears.
Speaker 1: And then other people analyzed and said, yeah, it's totally
Speaker 1: just regular regular brown bears that we already know about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that science at least was getting involved, and scientists
Speaker 1: kind of round me were like, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is great because we're using real science finally, and regardless
Speaker 1: of what result we get, like we're doing it the
Speaker 1: right way and that's really kind of the thing that counts, Like,
Speaker 1: don't don't be disappointed that we're not finding the Ettie
Speaker 1: because um, and if it's not clear to everyone listening,
Speaker 1: it seems like the yetti are are almost always just bears. Yes,
Speaker 1: that not just the the the the like tissue samples
Speaker 1: or the fecal samples or the hair samples, but also
Speaker 1: the tracks, the sightings, all of it are probably just
Speaker 1: Himalayan bears, brown bears, and black bears. And that's actually
Speaker 1: the opinion of Reinhold Messner, who actually is such a
Speaker 1: mountaineer around the area. He has a um A museum
Speaker 1: in the mountains and his one of his yettie samples
Speaker 1: were one of the ones that Psykes analyzed. His turned
Speaker 1: out to be the tooth of a dog. But he
Speaker 1: says that doesn't surprise me, because I think they're all bears.
Speaker 1: I think all of his bears, including his own sighting.
Speaker 1: He became uh infatuated with searching for the yetti because
Speaker 1: he spotted something in the Himalayas that he couldn't explain,
Speaker 1: and then through his own with thought goal research, he
Speaker 1: wrote a book about it. Um, he talked to other
Speaker 1: people about it, he did his own studies, and he
Speaker 1: kept his mind open and his mind became converted to
Speaker 1: it's all bears. Yeah, pretty much. Um, the Russians got involved,
Speaker 1: you would think, oh, and what like the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Now they got involved about eight years ago and went
Speaker 1: searching for uh, the Yetty and Siberia. Uh. And what
Speaker 1: they came back with were things like, oh, look at this,
Speaker 1: these twisted tree branches were made into beds or sleeping
Speaker 1: pods by the Yetty and they twisted these branches and
Speaker 1: look at this, it's evidence. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: they were clearly man made. There were tool made cuts,
Speaker 1: and uh, they were located on a not in a
Speaker 1: remote area at all, and just like right off a trail.
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, And what people think is, oh, they
Speaker 1: just cooked this stuff up to try and bring tourism
Speaker 1: to a not very tourist friendly area, right Siberia like
Speaker 1: And apparently there's a longstanding tradition among um Russians and
Speaker 1: former Soviets of basically drumming up tourism by playing on
Speaker 1: people's beliefs in the Yetti and the abominable snowman um.
Speaker 1: And I think there was a period of time. One
Speaker 1: of the people interviewed in this great BBC article about
Speaker 1: the Yetti Um, the the the this Russian scientist says,
Speaker 1: there's a period of time where it was like very
Speaker 1: fashionable for the intelligencia of Russia and the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: to basically go on trips in the summer looking for
Speaker 1: the abominable snowman. And they would show up in these towns,
Speaker 1: and every town had a designated Yeti witness, and the
Speaker 1: Yeti witnesses job was to basically regale them with tall
Speaker 1: tales that were supposedly true, take them on these tours
Speaker 1: into the forest um and then make a bunch of
Speaker 1: money off of them and say thanks a lot, chump,
Speaker 1: sorry we didn't see anything this time, but that they Apparently,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven, the Russian government orchestrated another
Speaker 1: one of those um through this conference, and from the
Speaker 1: conference they announced to the world they had found indisputable
Speaker 1: proof that Yetti exists from this bed in these broken
Speaker 1: branches and supposedly a few hairs attached to a clump
Speaker 1: of moss. But some other people who were attending anthropolo
Speaker 1: anthropologists and biologists were like, no, it's totally made up.
Speaker 1: This is all just a big tourist pr stunt, which
Speaker 1: is hilarious. Russia and putin supposedly tried to do it again.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and sixteen, he announced that he saw
Speaker 1: three yetti from a helicopter tour of Siberia. Oh that's funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so too. So, I mean, I don't have
Speaker 1: much else, Yettie your bears, right, Yeah, we couldn't. We
Speaker 1: couldn't talk about crypto zoology though, without mentioning that Cela
Speaker 1: canth argument. And and the thing about the YETI is
Speaker 1: that there there was actually a species of ape called
Speaker 1: gigant Epithecus that was like a nine ft tall ape,
Speaker 1: the biggest ape that ever lived. UM, that lived in
Speaker 1: that very area, and when extinct about a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. So the people who really believe in this are, like,
Speaker 1: you know, with that the cela can't went extinct like
Speaker 1: sixty million years before. We just think this guy went
Speaker 1: extinct a hundred thousand years before. Who's to say? So
Speaker 1: that seems to be the thing that's carrying on this belief.
Speaker 1: That and the fact that, as somebody put in one
Speaker 1: of these um articles, uh, all it would take is
Speaker 1: one yetti to prove that YETI exists. But no matter
Speaker 1: how much, there's no such thing as evidence they can
Speaker 1: prove it doesn't exist, so people are always going to
Speaker 1: believe it exactly exactly. So there you go. Uh, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about yetti, go to the
Speaker 1: Himalayas and look for it yourself. And since I said that,
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail or we should mention.
Speaker 1: If you're in Disney World, there's a roller coaster ride
Speaker 1: called Expedition Everest Colon because you know every good roller
Speaker 1: coaster has a colon in the name, uh, colon Legend
Speaker 1: of the Forbidden Mountain there are there is a track
Speaker 1: on display there that the reason it's not in a
Speaker 1: scientific museum and it's a Disney World is because it's
Speaker 1: a Yeti track. But you can go look at one
Speaker 1: from a TV show. Yeah, this guy named Gates who
Speaker 1: is not a zoologist at all, but he's an actor
Speaker 1: and an animal track or I don't even think he's
Speaker 1: an animal track or is he? No, No, he's he's
Speaker 1: an actor and the TV presenter and a producer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they presented one on his TV show and now
Speaker 1: that's a Disney World. Yeah. So um, And if you're
Speaker 1: in Disneyland, there's a Yetty on the Matterhorn ride. Oh,
Speaker 1: really like a real yetti. Yeah, they have one chained
Speaker 1: by the neck inside the matter horns. Really scrawny. They
Speaker 1: clearly aren't taking very good care of amazing. I already
Speaker 1: said it's time for listener mail, Charlis, Yeah, I got distracted. Sorry,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna call this, uh follow up on the
Speaker 1: chili finger that Jimmy Stewart planted at Windy's. Uh And
Speaker 1: and quick shout out there's a local listener from Georgia Tech.
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to say hello to a couple
Speaker 1: of people I met last weekend at the High Museum
Speaker 1: when I went to the Infinity Mirrors exhibits. Oh isn't
Speaker 1: that amazing? Yeah you always kusama um, Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: it was. Here's what I think. I think it was
Speaker 1: really cool. And it would have been a lot cooler
Speaker 1: if it's just like, yeah, you just walk through all
Speaker 1: these things and you don't wait thirty minutes to spend
Speaker 1: twenty seconds in the room. Yep. That took away from
Speaker 1: it a bit, you you mean? And I went at
Speaker 1: the into the day and people thinned out and we
Speaker 1: could just keep going in and staying as long as
Speaker 1: we wanted and them, so I I totally get what
Speaker 1: you're saying. It was cool though, and I also think
Speaker 1: like I went with my brother and his family, and
Speaker 1: Scott was kind of like I could build one of
Speaker 1: these in my backyard. By next weekend, I wanted to
Speaker 1: see Scott's Infinity mirror. I thought the same thing. Would
Speaker 1: be awesome to build one of those and just like
Speaker 1: hang out in it. For sure, I don't want to
Speaker 1: take anything away from her though. She's a great artist
Speaker 1: and it was really neat. I love the uh. I
Speaker 1: think the one that was sort of like the Christmas
Speaker 1: lights was my favorite one. What about the one that's
Speaker 1: like a kind of like an octagonal box that you
Speaker 1: look in? That was awesome. Yeah, it's just like you
Speaker 1: see your future in the eighties or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got a couple of cool photos, and but I
Speaker 1: largely kept the phone in my pocket and just tried
Speaker 1: to be in it. Man, yeah, man, I'm with you.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I met a couple of listeners that were
Speaker 1: just happen to be there, and they both came up
Speaker 1: and like are you Chuck, and so my brother got
Speaker 1: to kick out of that as well. Oh that's awesome. Um,
Speaker 1: but this was not one of those people. It just
Speaker 1: reminded me because it's a Georgia Tech student. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: relatively new listener have probably listened to about a hundred
Speaker 1: episode so far and tend to hop around. As you
Speaker 1: can tell, I'm a Georgia Tech student and really hope
Speaker 1: to run into you guys. At some point in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: did I mention I go to Georgia Tech. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: finally sort of had something to write in about it.
Speaker 1: Was listening to the Wendy's Chili podcast suddenly heard the
Speaker 1: name of a place. It sounded very familiar, Cole's Custard.
Speaker 1: Remember we mentioned that at the end as a as
Speaker 1: a place where there was a finger. Oh yeah, he
Speaker 1: said it was one of the places where a finger
Speaker 1: had been found. And it shocked me as it is
Speaker 1: just a tiny little custard shop that is not a
Speaker 1: chain on quite expensive beach property in North Carolina. I've
Speaker 1: been as a Georgia Tech student. I was shocked. I've
Speaker 1: been to the place probably five or ten times as
Speaker 1: a frequent wizard of Rightsful Beach and then never heard
Speaker 1: of anyone mentioned this incident. I just think it's very
Speaker 1: impressive that a small little store managed stay afloat after
Speaker 1: such an incident occurred. Hearing about the finger incident will
Speaker 1: not determine from going again, though, And that is from
Speaker 1: Ethan Lyons and Ethan. Maybe that is exactly why it endured.
Speaker 1: It's because people just want that custard so bad. It
Speaker 1: must be pretty good custard though, if you think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it didn't make like big national news, probably because
Speaker 1: it's not a chain I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that's part of it. Plus they also did a
Speaker 1: better job spending the pr than Wendy's didn't. Sure, I'm betting. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Ethan for letting us know, just kind
Speaker 1: of bringing that home. Hadn't really envisioned the place where
Speaker 1: that finger was found in the custard until now, so
Speaker 1: thanks for that. If you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us and kind of paint a more illustrative picture
Speaker 1: than we did about something we talked about, we love that,
Speaker 1: you can join us on Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1: Check out all of our links there, or you can
Speaker 1: send us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. M hmm.