Excited Japanese yeti hunters believe that their recent pictures of footprints are conclusive evidence that the elusive “mythical” species exists.

Yoshitera Takahashi, the group leader, claims that the discovery of the eight inch, human-like footprints corroborates local stories and sightings of yetis.

Takahashi’s team, from Nepal’s Yeti Project, had spent 42 days on top of a 25,000 ft peak in the Himalayas hoping to catch a glimpse of the mythical half man, half ape, on film. Although they had based themselves in a yeti “hot spot”, they failed to catch sight of the hairy creature.

Takahashi is one of the many “believers” and claims to have seen a yeti for himself on a previous expedition in 2003. In the 1950s, Eric Shipton took photographs of footprints in the snow that some are still convinced were those of a yeti. And in 2007, a set of 13-inch long footprints was photographed at the foot of Mount Everest.

This latest discovery of footprints comes only a few months after scientists from the UK’s Oxford Brookes University began DNA tests on hairs found in the Meghalaya area of India by yeti enthusiast Dipu Marak, who had followed up a three-day sighting by a jungle forester.

Experts say that the hairs have the same cuticle pattern as possible yeti hairs found in the Himalayas by the explorer Edmund Hilary and donated to the Natural History Museum. By a process of elimination, the hairs have not been proven to originate from any known native creature in the Meghalaya area.

Ian Redmond, from the UN’s Great Ape Survival Project, believes the hairs could come from an unknown species of primate. He suggests that the Megahalayan yeti could actually be a descendant of a 10-foot tall, black and grey ape-like creature called the Gigantopithecus, which was only identified 80 years ago.

Rhian Gibbings