ABOMINABLE FOOTPRINTS
The Yeti, or ye-te in the Sherpa language, ‘existed’ in various Eastern Himalayan cultures well before European mountaineers began knocking about the high glaciers of the Everest region. But it was only after Eric Shipton returned in 1951 with clear photographs of large, seemingly bi-pedal footprints in the snow, that reports of sightings of the ‘abominable snowman’ stopped being dismissed as hallucinations of oxygenstarved mountaineers.
By the late 1950s, there was a rush of scientific expeditions to search for it, including one by a Texas millionaire using trained bloodhounds.
Yeti: The Ecology of a Mystery is the tale of author Daniel Taylor’s attempts to unravel this mystery over the years he spent in Nepal. Were the tracks made by a bear or langur, and enlarged by melting snow? Or was there really a reclusive hominid living in the inaccessible margins of the vast Himalayan wilderness? Taylor claims to have solved the mystery of the footprints, and you should read it in his words. Taylor’s history of the search for the Yeti is thorough. Particularly interesting is his take on the many Yetis in culture, both literal and metaphorical. Neither Taylor’s prose nor his philosophical musings is up to the mark set by Peter Matthiessen, who covers identical ground in The Snow Leopard. But he can be engaging in his narration of his rambles in the wildernesses of Nepal. Despite the title, there is not as much ecology as one might expect, and some of it is dubious. For instance, Taylor claims that the predominance of sedges in a mountain grassland ecosystem indicates human-induced interference, such as grazing by livestock. But sedges are known to have a high degree of habitat specificity, many preferring rocks, cliffs or wetlands, where geological substrate is more selective than competition. He also doesn’t adequately explore the idea that the footprints were made by an unidentified primate—even though George Schaller, a pioneer of the study of the mountain gorilla, granted some credence to that theory.