Turns Out Yetis Are Really Just Bears

geek.com

23 points·mpv89··4 comments

I can see people mistaking a bear for something else. They don't look much like bears once their hair style is altered.

https://thewholegardenwillbow.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/im...

That doesn't look like an ape either, though. And there probably aren't many naked bears running around the wilds of Tibet.

There are three kinds of evidence in play here:

1. Artifacts claimed to come from yeti. High probability of being fake, whether the people who possess them are aware of that or not.

2. Physical evidence collected in the wild. High probability of coming from a more common animal, like a bear, than something less common.

3. Sightings, whether directly by the reporter, or from a first-hand witness describing to a reporter. Impossible to prove, but there are a lot of reports. Rule out everything that can be mistaken identity or fraudulent, and there are still a lot of reports. There are many consistencies across these reports that can't be explained as simply common-knowledge about expected behavior and characteristics. That's not proof, but it lends credence to the possibility of a real creature.

Thanks for posting this! The body almost looks like an elephant.

I know this is for a casual audience, but claiming that because bears and dogs are both caniforms, "bears are, in essence, massive, really distantly related dogs," is just... frustrating. It's fine to simplify, but it's so easy to avoid blunt inaccuracy in this case.

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