The Garo Hills "Yeti Hair" Samples

In the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, in north-east India, people speak of the mande burung. The name means "forest man." Outsiders call it the Indian yeti.

Dipu Marak, general secretary of the Achik Tourism Society, is a firm believer. He describes it as black and grey, nearly 3 metres tall, roughly 300 kg, surviving on fruit, roots and tree bark. The Society says it has photographs of large footprints and of "nests." Marak has put the footprints at 13 to 15 inches long. Llewellyn Marak described prints that were "almost human in appearance" but about 18 inches long.

November 2003. On the fringes of Nokrek National Park, a woodcutter named Nelbison Sangma was working in the forest. He said he saw the creature on three consecutive days. The Telegraph's version says two days in a row. It was about 10 feet tall. Part man, part ape. It broke branches off trees and ate their sap.

The forestry department did not believe him. Years later, BBC reporter Alastair Lawson visited the spot. According to reposts of his report, the branches had been broken and scratch marks were clearly visible on the bark.

Marak followed the trail. In dense jungle in the West Garo Hills he recovered two short hairs, 33 mm and 44 mm long. He later gave them to Lawson.

In July 2008 the hairs reached Oxford Brookes University. Primatologist Anna Nekaris and microscopy specialist Jon Wells examined them at up to 200 times magnification. Ape expert Ian Redmond coordinated. The hairs were compared with reference samples from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The obvious candidates were ruled out.

Redmond saw a striking likeness to the "yeti" hairs Edmund Hillary had brought back from the Himalayas. "We fully expected them to come from a known animal… We failed to find that. So the mystery remains," he said. He went further. "It could easily be an unknown primate, even if it is not a yeti."

Follicle cells were still attached, which made DNA testing possible. Accounts differ on which lab did the work. By October 2008 the answer was in. Himalayan goral. A goat-antelope.

Redmond now called the link between the sightings and the hairs "purely circumstantial." The find, he said, might simply show that the goral ranges far south of its known Himalayan habitat of 1,000 to 4,000 m. Marak was not moved. "While these results are discouraging, it does not affect my firm conviction that there is a Yeti-like creature out there… It has been seen too often for it to be dismissed as nothing more than a myth," he told the BBC.

The story ran in BBC News, the Telegraph, the Independent and Mongabay, and in German, French and Basque outlets, and Loren Coleman covered it on Cryptomundo. Forest officers remain sceptical that any such primate lives in the area. The hunt went on all the same, and the Centre for Fortean Zoology later sent expeditions to the Garo Hills, and Richard Freeman wrote up the India 2010 trip. The two hairs had an answer. The forest man did not.