For the past year, New York’s famed Explorer’s Club has been advising the Crown Prince of Bhutan on the best use of science and technology in his kingdom’s ongoing search for the mythical biped known as the Yeti, DNAinfo reports.
The club, whose illustrious members have included Teddy Roosevelt, Neil Armstrong and Sir Edmund Hillary, is helping the small Himalayan nation “set up motion-detector cameras and fly drones in its remotest regions in the hope of snapping a picture of the Yeti in its natural habitat,” according to DNAinfo.
Explorer’s Club president Alan Nichols met Bhutan’s Prince Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck last year during a business trip to the country. The prince told Nichols that his father, the former king and father of modern Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, believes in the Yeti and once led an expedition to find it.
This is not the first time the Explorer’s Club has investigated the Yeti: In 1960, Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first people to scale Mt. Everest, went to Nepal to investigate Yeti sightings. He debunked what was purported to be a Yeti scalp, proving that it was in fact an antelope’s hide.
Nichols says that the Explorer’s Club is advising the prince on setting up motion-sensitive cameras and flying drones over remote, uninhabited regions of Bhutan where the Yeti is suspected to live.
They’re taking this very seriously, because this is serious science, Nichols seriously asserts.
(Photo: hillary h)
