Yeti or Not, here comes the bullsquirt!!!
Monster Week’s Yeti or Not special is one big mess of pseudo science and sensational statements…
Yeti or Not Description
Dr Mark Evans, a veterinarian and explorer, is on a mission to sift truth from fiction in order to explain the yeti.
Yeti or Not takes us to Bhutan, Nepal, Italy, Boston, Tibet all in the search of creatures that could be the source of the Yeti legends… we go from some kind of hybrid polar bear that is somehow simultaneously a dangerous super predator of humans yet also is never seen to the possibility of the Himalayas having its own version of Homo Floresiensis.
Yeti Or Not… A Show Recap…
We start off Yeti or Not with a “scientist” claiming that the Yeti is actually a polar bear / brown bear hybrid… I was not Yeti for this…
“Polar bears hunt humans so perhaps these hybrid bears do that too”
We then visit Steve Berry!
Steve Berry believes, that somehow, there’s a human species that’s actually responsible for Yeti sightings.
Steve Berry’s reasoning for the claim that the Yeti is a primative human is that it’s such a remote part of Bhutan that no normal human could be there. Okey doke.
As a side note, not once did they apparently think that those “bipedal tracks” in the snow were actually animal tracks with snow blown over… masking them.
“It was well known a yeti could imitate the sounds of a cat, dog, horse, or yak”
Then Off We Go on a Bear DNA Hunt!
Dr Mark Evans visits with the bear researcher Charlotte Lindquist to get his dubious ‘hybrid polar bear / yeti’ DNA samples tested… it’s this whole thing.
Oh but wait… the fun doesn’t stop at bears! We then move on to hobbits! Animal Planet can’t NOT include the hobbits of Flores!!!
As some of you may know, I wrote repeatedly on the Animal Planet mockumentary The Cannibal in the Jungle and did my best to inform people of the facts regarding both the fake documentary and the real life hobbit men. Homo Floresiensis is only included in Yeti or Not to be sensational if you ask me.
The Denisovans
While the hunt for bear DNA continues, Dr Mark Evans explores the possibility that the story of the Yeti was originally based on the Denisovans. He then collects some DNA samples from Tibetans to see if they contain telltale signs of having some Denisovan DNA.
It turns out they do.
The End
“We didn’t find evidence of any polar bear in the samples you sent me”
The results are in and ALL of the samples collected by Dr Mark Evans turn out to be from native bear species! So that’s good…
At the end of the show, it seems Yeti or Not came to the conclusion that while the current stories of Yeti’s are all based on native bears… the Yeti story may have been initially based on the interactions between a population of Denisovans and what would become the Tibetans.
Much like with Homo Floresiensis, stories of the Denisovans may have survived till today in the folktales of the resident populations… The tales of Yeti’s may very well be oral history…
So Is Yeti or Not a Mockumentary?
You know… Yeti or Not really isn’t a mockumentary. It’s somewhat close to being one, but they always stop short of making the completely outlandish claims necessary to turn it from paranormal pseudo science into a full-blown mockumentary. It really just seems to be a pretty unscientific paranormal documentary that’s been jazzed up and made more sensational so as to sell better during Monster Week’s memorial day weekend of specials.
What Yeti or Not is though… it is much like Animal Planet’s and Discovery’s other mockumentaries (such as The Cannibal in the Jungle, Mermaids: The Body Found, and Megalodon) in that they all lie to the viewer by omission.
They all make these extraordinary claims but never provide proof or even provide enough information to verify the basic “scientific facts” that support their proof.
Everything is always kept in this grey area where things sound like they could be true… and it sounds like they’re addressing the scientific concerns people have with their outlandish claims… but when it comes down to it they used so much weasel language in their ‘proof’ that they can always say they didn’t ACTUALLY say something was true.
So… is the Yeti real???
Yes and no.
While it seems pretty clear-cut that recent Yeti sightings can be attributed to native bears (no polar bears sorry), whether or not the original Yeti stories were truly based off of the Denisovans is just wild speculation.
While it’s fun to believe there are large animals still out there that we just don’t know about… whether it’s the Yeti, or Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster… we all just gotta accept that Yeti or Not stops at fun and doesn’t extend to the world of facts.
An Aside…
It’s almost like that Pentax camera is actually just one of Animal Planet’s props that they drag out to give their pseudo science shows a veneer of credibility??? And life is just one big lie?????