No one looks askance at following up evidence for a new snake or frog. And why not? Credit for a significant discovery awaits; and science half expects the new critter to be found.

An bipedal manlike primate is, for reasons cultural (and even religious) and otherwise, a different story. You’re not supposed to find them. So no evidence short of absolute proof is either accepted or followed up.

Yeti (and sasquatch) expeditions have one characteristic constantly misrepresented by skeptics and the public at large: they almost always come up with evidence of the kind that gets followed up …with other kinds of animals. But with these animals, the search winds up (as it almost inevitably will on the short fuses such searches have) short of proof, and what has been found isn’t run to ground as it is with conventionally accepted animals.

I’ve got high hopes for a Yeti discovery, although it may take up to 20 years because of a lack of scientific involvement and treacherous terrain.

- Tim