Facts and Details

TIBETAN ANIMALS

Wild asses Tibet was once filled with wild animals and still is to some degree. In the old days many animals had no fear of humans. The Swedish explorer Sven Hedin wrote in the early 20th century, "The wild animals do not sense that man is their enemy. They know only the wolf and are alert against his cunning." The abundance of wildlife today is demonstrated by the large number of stiff, frozen and flattened road kills on the roads. Wildlife found in Tibet includes Tibetan eagles, marmots, Himalayan mouse hares, foxes, and Himalayan ravens. Agkistrodon himalayanus is a snake that lives as high 4,900 meters (16,000 feet) in the Himalayas

Himalayan rivers are often milky and full of sediment and have a source somewhere in Tibet. Sometimes the lower reaches are full of tropical vegetation. In the old days, tigers and rhinoceros roamed here. At an elevation of around 1,000 meters there are stubby trees and rhododendron. Sun birds and langur monkeys are often seen here. There are also tragopans, a turkey-size pheasant with red feathers decorated with white spots. The rhododendrons get progressively short as one climbs in elevation: 15-foot trees shrink to ground level bushes.

By 2,500 meters the rhododendrons have largely been replaced by conifers: mostly Himalayan fir and Bhutan pine. These trees have needles that are designed to shed snow and withstand cold temperatures. Sometimes you can see red pandas ihere. Above tree line is tundra-like vegetation, rissocky plants and occasional buckhorn bushes and junipers. Here you can find marmots and pikas that feed on grass and cushion plants and they in turn provide food for griffon vultures that soar in the thermals.

Above 3,500 meters much of the vegetation gives out except for harsh grasses that few animals other than yaks can feed on. In the winter there is usually snow. Throughout the year high winds blow at this elevation. With moisture alpine meadows can flourish up to an elevation of 6000 meters.

Good Websites and Sources: China.org article on Tibetan animals china.org.cn ;Animal Info animalinfo.org/country/china ; ARKive (do a Search for China or the Animal Species You Want) arkive.org Animal Picture Archives (do a Search for the Animal Species You Want) animalpicturesarchive ; Yeti Occultopedia.comoccultopedia.com ; Unmuseum unmuseum.org ; Wikipedia article on the Yeti Wikipedia ; Links in this Website: SNOW LEOPARDS Factsanddetails.com/China ; SHAHTOOSH AND CHIRUS Factsanddetails.com/China ; YAKS Factsanddetails.com/China ; ANIMALS AND PLANTS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China

Biodiversity Hotspot: Himalayas

The Himalaya Hotspot is home to the world’s highest mountains, including Mt. Everest. The mountains rise abruptly, resulting in a diversity of ecosystems that range from alluvial grasslands and subtropical broadleaf forests to alpine meadows above the tree line. Vascular plants have even been recorded at more than 6,000 meters. The hotspot is home to important populations of numerous large birds and mammals, including vultures, tigers, elephants, rhinos and wild water buffalo. [Ibid]

VITAL SIGNS: 1) Hotspot Original Extent (km²) 741,706; 2) Hotspot Vegetation Remaining (km²) 185,427; 3) Endemic Plant Species 3,160; 4) Endemic Threatened Birds 8; 5) Endemic Threatened Mammals 4; 6) Endemic Threatened Amphibians 4; 7) Extinct Species† 0; 8) Human Population Density (people/km²) 123; 9) Area Protected (km²) 112,578; 10) Area Protected (km²) in Categories I-IV* 77,739. †Recorded extinctions since 1500. *Categories I-IV afford higher levels of protection. [Ibid]

Stretching in an arc over 3,000 kilometers of northern Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and the northwestern and northeastern states of India, the Himalaya hotspot includes all of the world’s mountain peaks higher than 8,000 meters. This includes the world’s highest mountain, Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) as well as several of the world’s deepest river gorges. [Ibid]

This immense mountain range, which covers nearly 750,000 km², has been divided into two regions: the Eastern Himalaya, which covers parts of Nepal, Bhutan, the northeast Indian states of West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh, southeast Tibet (China), and northern Myanmar; and the Western Himalaya, covering the Kumaon-Garhwal, northwest Kashmir, and northern Pakistan. While these divisions are largely artificial, the deep defile carved by the antecedent Kali Gandaki River between the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri mountains has been an effective dispersal barrier to many species. [Ibid]

The abrupt rise of the Himalayan Mountains from less than 500 meters to more than 8,000 meters results in a diversity of ecosystems that range, in only a couple of hundred kilometers, from alluvial grasslands (among the tallest in the world) and subtropical broadleaf forests along the foothills to temperate broadleaf forests in the mid hills, mixed conifer and conifer forests in the higher hills, and alpine meadows above the treeline. [Ibid]

Fur, Conservation Efforts in Tibet and the Dalai Lama

Animals in Tibet are threatened by mining, climate change, tourism and road building. Conservation efforts have included creating the Three River Source Area a nature reserve in 2000, confiscating many hunters' guns (for which there is no doubt also a political motive) and tightened penalties against poaching. Chinese conservation experts told The Guardian that reserves in Tibetan areas have more devoted staff than anywhere else in China because locals worship nature.

Jonathan Watt wrote in The Guardian, “While the government has moved herdsmen and their cattle off the land, it is also trying to encourage predators to move in. Among the strangest sights in the mountains are man-made eyries designed to attract eagles and falcons. They look out of place, but are surely healthier than the huge quantities of poisons and contraceptive pills dumped by the authorities to quell a plague of rodents - rats, mice, pika, hamsters and zokor - that are chewing up the soil.” [Source: Jonathan Watt, The Guardian, June 15, 2010]

The Dalai Lama stepped into the conservation fray in 2006, when he made a public statement stressing the importance of wildlife. In Tibetan communities, this led to bonfires of clothes and bags that were trimmed with animal hides.

One Tibetan in Qinghai told The Guardian burned most of his cheaper animal-skin clothes but kept the most expensive items — such as 10,000 yuan boots trimmed with otter fur— locked away. “I used to wear a fox-skin hat, but I never do that now,” he said. “If you wear a fox skin in public, people will beat you. It happened recently to a woman who was set on by a crowd of monks.”

See Chiru

Marmots and Mouse Hares in Tibet

Marmots (known as chiwa or piya) are the most commonly seen animals in Tibet. Resembling giant golden woodchucks, they are rodents that live in burrows, behave somewhat like prairie dogs and make strange bird-like chirping noise when they are agitated.

Marmots are called in Himalayan snow pigs in Tibet, Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai. To catch them hunters simply wait around in the morning for them to emerge from their burrows so you can see where they live. Later the hunters return to the burrows light a fire and direct the smoke into the burrow. When the marmot escapes it is caught in a net.

Himalayan mouse hares (also known as pika or chipi) are also often seen. They have been observed on high slopes of Mt. Everest. According to the Guinness Book of Records, they are the highest living animal. A pika has been observed at an elevation of 20,106 feet.

Endangered Species in Tibet

Black neck crane Among the endangered species found in Tibet are the snow leopard, ibex, musk deer, Tibetan antelope (chiru), Tibetan wild ass, , black necked crane and wild yak.

The burrhel (bharal, nawa na blue sheep) of the Himalayas is very closely related to both goats and sheep. They are tan, white and gray. Their color camouflages them well on a rocky mountain landscape.

Kiangs are they largest Asian wild asses. They live at elevations above 13,000 feet and have black manes and tan-and-white bodies. Their numbers were greatly reduced in the 1960s when Chinese soldiers shot them for sport and for food. They and Tibetan gazelles are increasingly having to share their habitats with livestock.

The number wild asses has grown to 200,000 in recent years and this is viewed as a modest conservation success story. Some complain the wild ass are also becoming a pest because they compete with the livestock for what is left of the grasslands. [Source: Jonathan Watt, The Guardian, June 15, 2010]

Living in some parts of Tibet are rare white lipped deer, and macaques (a kind of monkey) that survive in the winter by eating insects and vegetation under the snow. Himalayan brown bears—virtually the same as North American grizzly bears and Russian brown bears—are very rare, only a few dozen remain. Also nown as Tibetan brown bears, they stand two meters tall and are found only in the forests of southern Tibet and the Chantang plateau.

Large herds of wild yak, Tibetan antelope, wild donkeys and deer that were seen on the Tibetan plateau during a source-to-sea expedition along the Yangtze River in 1989, have largely been slaughtered by poachers for the animal's meat and hides. Items from endangered animals for sale in Western China include wolf and snow leopard pelts, fox furs, bearskins, and carcasses of Imperial eagles.

The illegal trade in musk, bear's paw and gall bladder, deer antlers and other animal parts is a problem, On the streets of Chinese cities, Tibetan traders can sometimes be seen selling animal parts for Chinese medicines from animals killed in Tibet.

In 2006, the Dalai Lama spoke out about protecting endangered species and monks responded by burning their fur lined robes.

See Fur, Clothes

Tibetan Blue Bear

The Tibetan bear or Tibetan blue bear is a subspecies of the brown bear found in the eastern Tibetan plateau. It is also known as the Himalayan blue bear, Himalayan snow bear, Tibetan brown bear, or the horse bear. In Tibetan it is known as Dom gyamuk. One of the rarest subspecies of bear in the world, the blue bear is rarely sighted in the wild. The blue bear is known in the west only through a small number of fur and bone samples. It was first classified in 1854. [Source: Wikipedia]

The blue bear is notable for having been suggested as one possible inspiration for sightings associated with the legend of the yeti. A 1960 expedition to search for evidence of the yeti, led by Sir Edmund Hillary, returned with two scraps of fur that had been identified by locals as 'yeti fur' that were later scientifically identified as being portions of the pelt of a blue bear. While it is unlikely that the blue bear generally occupies the high mountain peaks and snow fields where the yeti is sometimes sighted, it is possible that the occasional specimen might be observed traveling through these regions during times of reduced food supply, or in search of a mate. However, the limited information available about the habits and range of the blue bear makes such speculation difficult to confirm. [Ibid]

Tibetan blue bears often have a yellow-brown or whitish cape forming a saddle-shaped marking across the shoulders. They are much feared in regions where they are found. According to some Chinese sources, 1,500 people are killed a year by these bears, a figure that seems to be too large to be true, but some say is credible and caused by the clearing of new farm land in the bear’s habitat. Becasue few local people have guns the bears often have te upper hand in confrontations. [Source: the book “Bears of the World” by Terry Domico]

The exact conservation status of the blue bear is unknown, due to limited information. However, in the United States trade in blue bear specimens or products is restricted by the Endangered Species Act. It is also listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) as a protected species. It is threatened by the use of bear bile in traditional Chinese medicine and habitat encroachment. [Source: Wikipedia]

The Gobi brown bear is sometimes classified as being of the same subspecies as the Tibetan blue bear; this is based on morphological similarities, and the belief that the desert-dwelling Gobi bear represents a relict population of the blue bear. However, the Gobi bear is sometimes classified as its own subspecies, and closely resembles other Asian brown bears. [Ibid]

In the northern mountains of India and other parts of the Himalayas there lives a grizzly-like bear with whitish- and reddish-colored fur and is known as the red bear by locals. About the size of a grizzly (1.7 to 2.5 meters in lenth), it lives above tree tree line and feeds on grasses, roots and occasionally mountain sheep killed in avalanches. Herders sometimes kill th emothers and capture the cubs which are sold to itinerate entertainers for use as dancing bears. Other Asian brown bear subspecies include the little-known Manchurian bear of northeast China.[Source: the book “Bears of the World” by Terry Domico]

Drongs and Wolves in Tibet

Drongs are wild yaks. see Yaks

There are many wolves in Tibet. They are strong enough to bring down a yak but are elusive and rarely seen. Sometimes they kill livestock.

Tibetan Horses

In 1993, French anthropologist Michel Peissel discovered a breed of domesticated horse in the remote Nangchen region of Tibet which is believed to be new to science. Free of the Arabian, Mongolian and Turkish horse blood, which is found in nearly every other horse in the world today, the Tibetan horse was raised by nomad horsemen in valleys that were so remote the horses were prevented from mixing with other types of horses for thousands of years.

"Unlike the Mongolian horse, which is free range," Peissel told the New York Times, "the Nangchen only survives due to constant human intervention and selection. Free range horses that breed on their own don't achieve the degree of physical perfection and stamina found in horses selectively raised by man." As an adaptation to the high altitudes the Tibetan horse has an enormous heart and massive lungs. The animals are used for herding livestock and competing in horse races at important three-week festivals.

In 1995, Peissel discovered a new breed of wild horse in the Riwoqe region of northeastern Tibet after his expedition was forced to change its route because of a snowstorm and pass through an isolated valley with unmapped forests. Similar to horses depicted in Stone Age paintings in European caves, the Riwoqe horse is short and squat and looks more like a donkey than a horse. It stands about 3.5 feet tall and has tiny ears, small nostrils, a dark bristly main, a brown coat and black lines on its back and lower legs.

Riwoqe horses live in a valley hemmed in by 16,000 foot passes. Scientists suggest that they may be members of a "relic population" isolated from other horses and able to keep its unique characteristics. "They looked completely archaic," Peissel told the New York Times, "like horses in prehistoric cave paintings. We thought it was just a freak then we saw they were all alike." Describing the expedition in which the horse was discovered (his 24th in the Himalayas) Peissel said, "It was very bleak. We had to cope with hailstorms and trek along precarious trails with very steep drops. I think it was the most difficult journey I ever made."

Tibetan Deer

A herd of Tibet red deer, a species thought to have been extinct and not seen in the wild for 50 years, was rediscovered in a remote valley in southeastern Tibet near where China, Bhutan and India meet by the eminent natural George B. Schaller. The search for the deer began in 1987 when several captive deer were seen in Lhasa. "From past records, I knew the approximate range of the Tibet Red deer, or shou, as it is sometimes called, so we made a special effort to look at those areas to see if any deer survived," Schaller said.

A relative of the North American elk, the Tibetan red deer stand about four feet at the shoulder and has distinctive five-point antlers and a white patch on its rump. Mature males weigh about 250 pounds. The animals live in alpine meadows above 13,000 feet, Many of the deer disappeared in the 1960s and 70s as a result of hunting.

Later some Tibet red deer were rediscovered 75 miles east of Lhasa in a remote in valley. There are plans to set up reserves and establish conservation teams for the deer, which are valued for their meat and antlers, which are used in oriental medicine.

The McNeill's deer of the Tibetan plateau is one of the world's most endangered animals.

Birds in Tibet

Tibet lies along major migration routes for birds. More than 480 species have been sighted in Tibet. Of the these only 30 or so live in Tibet full time. Among the birds seen in Tibet are lammergeyers, partridges, pheasants, grebes and snow cocks. Large flocks of vultures sometimes circle monasteries, waiting for sky burials. Good birdwatching spots include the lakes of Yamdrok-tso and Nam-tso.

The rare black-necked crane inhabits remote regions as high as 16,000 feet. It was is the last of the crane species to be discovered and is revered as a spiritual being by Tibetans. Black-necked cranes breed in the marshy Maquan Valley near Paryang and in Qinghai. They have also spotted on the Lhasa River near Lhasa. See Animals Under Nature

Bar-headed geese summer in the high plateaus of Tibet. During their southward migration they reach heights of 25,000 as they cross the Himalayas, to winter in India.

Tibetan Bunting, One of the World's Rarest Birds

Phil McKenna wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “The Tibetan bunting (Emberiza koslowi) is one of the least-known birds on the planet. It has a black and white head and chestnut-colored back and is only slightly larger than a chickadee. In 1900, Russian explorers were the first to document the bird and collect specimens. One hundred years later, British ornithologists published only the third scientific study of the bunting, based on fewer than four hours of observations. [Source: Phil McKenna, Smithsonian magazine, October 2011]

The bird’s obscurity is due in large part to the remoteness of its habitat. In A Field Guide to the Birds of China, the bunting’s home range appears as a tiny splotch on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. The bird lives in a region of rugged peaks and isolated valleys where four of Asia’s largest rivers—the Yellow, the Yangtze, the Mekong and the Salween—tumble down snowcapped mountains before spreading across the continent. [Ibid]

Tibetans call it the “dzi bead bird” because the stripes on its head resemble the agate amulets locals wear to ward off evil spirits. Tashi and his friends have tracked the birds closely for the past eight years. They now know that buntings descend 2,000 feet downslope into warmer, more protected valleys in November and stay there until May. They know how the birds’ diet changes throughout the year: In winter buntings forage on oats and other grains; in summer they eat butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles and other insects. The monks have found that the birds lay an average of 3.6 eggs per nest, and that their main predators are falcons, owls, fox and weasels, in addition to badgers. “When we started in 2003, we started looking in trees for the nests,” Tashi says of the ground-nesting buntings. “We didn’t know anything.”

Efforts by Tibetan Monk to Save the Tibetan Bunting

Phil McKenna wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “Rrrrrr, Badgers!” Tashi Zangpo says, cradling the remains of a bird nest in his hands on a mountain slope nearly 14,000 feet above sea level. For weeks, Tashi, a Tibetan Buddhist monk and self-taught conservation biologist, has scoured these mountains in China’s Qinghai province for nests of the Tibetan bunting. Now that he’s found one, he’s discovered that a badger has beaten him to it and devoured the young. [Source: Phil McKenna, Smithsonian magazine, October 2011]

Tashi saw his first Tibetan bunting as a young monk in Baiyu, a village in Qinghai province not far from where he and I now stand. One of eight children, he came to the monastery at age 13 when his parents could no longer afford to take care of him. He was homesick and often hiked up a mountain above the village to surround himself with songbirds he knew from home. Using a sharp rock, he etched images of the birds on fieldstones. An older lama at the monastery noticed his interest and taught him how to make paper so he could draw the birds. [Ibid]

Tashi has noticed dramatic changes in the environment, including shrinking glaciers, increasing human development and declining bird populations. Based on his own observations and on ancient Tibetan scripts about wild plants and animals, Tashi says the buntings, never high in number, are among the most vulnerable of all Tibetan birds. Yak herding increases every year, and the animals trample the buntings’ nests. Climate change is causing nearby glaciers to disappear and meadows to go dry, forcing birds and livestock to share an ever-shrinking area. [Ibid]

By explaining his findings to local herders, Tashi was able to get critical bunting habitat protected for the July through September nesting season. “We’ve told the herders these months are for the Tibetan buntings to use,” he says. “Once the birds fledge, then the yaks can eat here.” In one valley where grazing is now restricted, bunting numbers increased from about 5 in 2005 to 29 in 2009. [Ibid]

One of the remaining mysteries Tashi is trying to solve is why the buntings have such poor breeding success. Even in areas where summer grazing has ceased, fewer than 30 percent of chicks survive. Predators and flooding are the top causes of mortality, but it’s not clear why these problems afflict Tibetan buntings more than other bird species that nest on the ground. [Ibid]

On the mountain slope, Tashi discovers there may still be hope for at least one of this year’s young. A short distance from where he found the ravaged nest, he spies a chick, still too young to fly, hopping through the grass. The bird somehow escaped the badger attack and is likely the sole survivor from this year’s brood. The bird’s parents have seen it as well. As Tashi and Druk watch, the adults feed it grasshoppers and other delicacies. It won’t be able to fly for a few more days and predators are still a risk. “Tonight we’ll say a prayer for this chick that it can grow up to be big and strong, and go to college,” Tashi says with a smile. [Ibid]

Tashi Zangpo, Tibetan Monk Conservationist

Tashi, now 41, has since crisscrossed the Tibetan plateau, drawing 400 bird species. He is currently compiling a field guide that evokes the work of John James Audubon or Roger Tory Peterson. He wears prayer beads on one wrist and a digital watch with altimeter and compass on the other. “As Buddhists, this is something we have to do—we have to help protect the birds and animals that don’t have any other protection...Friends of mine joke with me saying, ‘That person is a reincarnation of a lama, that person is a reincarnation of a rinpoche [a great teacher] and you, you are a reincarnation of a sparrow,’” he says. [Ibid]

Tashi has been improving his field biology skills with help from Wang Fang, a conservation biology graduate student at Peking University in Beijing. Rather than wandering alone across a mountainside to count birds in a given area, the monk now walks defined paths flanked at 110-yard intervals by other observers. He uses GPS equipment to map the bird’s distribution and is compiling his findings for publication in an academic journal. Based on sightings and the amount of suitable habitat, Tashi believes the bird’s range is even smaller than what is shown in existing field guides. [Ibid]

When it comes to protecting the species, Wang says that Tashi is already accomplishing more on his own than Wang could ever hope to. “If you are a scientist, you can’t go to Tashi’s village and say Buddha doesn’t like you to do this or that. But he can, and they will listen to him.”

“He is a good scientist who at the same time is doing conservation and environmental education,” says George Schaller, one of the world’s pre-eminent conservation biologists. Tashi recently started assisting Schaller, of Panthera, a big cat conservation organization, by monitoring snow leopards and blue sheep in the mountains around Baiyu. Schaller says the monk’s greatest contribution to conservation, however, may be his field guide of the region’s birds in the local language. “He is an exceptional artist, like the talented, old-fashioned naturalists of Britain and North America, who brings to his work a deep Buddhist reverence for all life. It’s a wonderful combination.” Tashi’s field guide “will be a tremendous benefit to the Tibetan culture,” Schaller says. [Ibid]

Four years ago, Tashi and Druk Kyab, another monk in the monastery in Baiyu, formed the Nyanpo Yutse Environmental Protection Association, named after a nearby mountain considered sacred by local Tibetans. The group, consisting of five full-time staff members and about 60 volunteers, has taken it upon itself to preserve the region’s plants, animals, lakes and streams. Most of the work has focused on the Tibetan bunting, but the group has also compiled detailed notes on dozens of other species, as well as the rate at which nearby glaciers are receding. [Ibid]

Yeti

The Abominable Snowman is a legendary creature known to Tibetans and Sherpas by many names, with "Yeti" being the one most well-known in the West. According to accounts from purported witnesses the yeti is an ape-like creatures that stands upright like a man and walks on two legs. It is between five and eight feet tall and has long arms, broad feet between 12 and 20 inches long, and long brownish or reddish hair that hangs over its eyes.

One early Himalayan explorer wrote: "Their heads are said to be pointed on the top and their eyes are deeply sunken and reddish. Their light colored faces are without hair, we are told, and not at all pretty, except to perhaps to another Yeti. They do not have a tail. The feet, like most of the body, are covered with hair." [Source: People's Almanac]

Himalayan villagers tell stories of yetis abducting young girls in the night, throwing stones at villagers and snacking on yaks. Female yetis are said to have large sagging breasts, which makes them top heavy. If your are chased by one you are supposed to run down hill. If the yeti chases you she will fall down forward.

There were stories of a domesticated yeti named Zana who lived in the 1800s and bore human children and a yeti corpse found in a Minnesota freezer in 1968. Local people are often reluctant to talk about yeti sightings out of fear of bad luck. The Sherpas say that any man who sees the face of a yeti will die.

Other mythical Himalayan creatures include the dremo, a bear-like beast that stands on two legs. Some say it is the same thing as a yeti. One Tibetan man told National Geographic, "A dremo broke into a storehouse, killed a little girl, and ate our meat."

The yeeren is a Chinese version f the yeti. Sherpas described Metoh-kangmu (dirty men in the snow) that became mistranslated as a Abominable Snowman.

Book: My Quest for the Yeti by Reinhold Messner (St. Martin's Press).

Abominable Snowman Sightings

One of the first Western reports of Abominable Snowman footprints was made in 1887 by Col. L.A. Waddel who was exploring the slopes around Mount Everest. Three years later a mountain climber reported seeing similar prints that "led uphill and vanished among boulders."

In 1925 Russian soldiers reported shooting and killing an Abominable Snowman in the Pamirs. In 1942 a Russian soldier fleeing from a prison camp through the Himalayas encountered "two manlike creatures 100 yards from him." He estimated they were eight feet tall and said they had massive arms, square heads and were covered with thick coats of brown fur.

The Italian explorer A. N. Tombazi said he encountered a Yeti while climbing in the Himalayas in 1925. "Unquestionably," he wrote, "the figure in the outline was exactly upright, and stopping occasionally to uproot some dwarf rhododendrons. It showed dark against the snow and wore no clothing."

Explorer Eric Shripton spotted four-toed ape-like tracks in 1936 and photographed them in 1951. In 1948, two Norwegians said they followed a pair of large ape-like creatures but were unsuccessful in their attempt to lasso them.

The area around Dhaulagiri, , the world's seventh highest mountain, in Nepal has had the most yeti sightings. In 1971, a Japanese mountaineer said that he got within 20 meters of 1.5-meter-tall apelike creature at Dhaulagiri. The creature ran away when he was approached. In 1975 another Japanese Alpinist said he saw a group of creatures that resembled gorillas. Some were large and some were small he said. "Yeti footprints" were found by a doctor on the same expedition.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mt. Everest, reportedly saw Yeti footprints even though he denies it, and a member of one Everest Expedition reportedly took a photograph of the Abominable Snowman on Menlung Glacier. Man apes have also been reported in Central Asia, Sumatra and New Guinea and Oregon and Washington state in the United States

Evidence and Explanations of the Abominable Snowman

Eric Shipton's famous photograph in 1951 of an abominable snowman footprint was reportedly taken near Dhaulagiri. Three years later an expedition sponsored by the Daily Mail failed to turn up an evidence of the yeti. Shipton was fond of practical jokes and there are inconsistencies about his report.

There are periodic expeditions that aim to find a yeti. In the summer of 2003 a seven-member Japanese team went to Dhaulagiri to search for the yeti. They planned to set up infrared cameras along paths thought to be used by yetis. A 1994 expedition came across a cave with human-like footprints and smells.

In his book My Quest for the Yeti, Reinhold Messner argues that the yeti is likely a large brown bear that commonly stands on its hind legs. He wrote there have been too many reports from Himalayan mountain villages of yetis and their descriptions have been too similar to dismiss the monster a myth. He himself saw a large unidentifiable biped and some huge footprints in a forest in Tibet during a trek in 1986. The yeti remains he found stored in a monastery, he said, were fakes.

Some strange black hairs found in the West Garo Mountains in remote northwest India have set off a new wave of speculation about the yeit. The hairs were analyzed by primatologsts in Britain and did not match any known species

See Bhutan.

PLANTS IN TIBET

snow lilly Juniper trees and willows are common in central Tibet. Wild flowers included pansies, oleanders and tsi-tog, an indigenous high-altitude pink flower. In the lower altitude border areas, you can find forests of pines, spruce and fir. In parts of eastern Tibet which receive a fair amount of rainfall you can see oaks, elms, birches and subtropical plants such as rhododendrons and azaleas. In the Everest area there are rhododendron trees over 60 feet tall.

Flowering plants (Ermania himalayenis) have been found at an elevation of 21,000 feet in the Himalayas.

Saussurea, a Himalayan plant, is covered with a massive dome of white fur. It has a small hole where pollinating insects that can reach the flowers. The flowers and leaves are barely visible.

Lichens grow up to 18,000 feet in the Himalayas and are one of the few living things that grow in the Antarctic and the islands in the Arctic.

Image Sources: Cosmic Harmony, Purdue University

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

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© 2008 Jeffrey Hays

Last updated December 2012