Abominable Snowman 'a bear'

A Japanese mountaineer is attempting to settle the decades-long debate over the existence of the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, claiming that his years of study have shown the legendary apelike monster is in fact a brown bear.

Makoto Nebuka, 56, a senior member of the Japanese Alpine Club, plans to publish the results of his 12 years of research that led him to conclude the mysterious creature, known as the Yeti, was really the endangered Himalayan brown bear (ursus arctos).

Nebuka's theory rests on a linguistic discovery: through a series of interviews with local people in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, he has found that "yeti" is a regional dialect word for "meti", meaning bear.

Ethnic Tibetan tribes, who are scared of the powerful bears that often attack their villages, worship the meti/yeti as a dreadful, supernatural creature, Nebuka said.