A row has erupted in Nepal after a Japanese expert on Himalayan languages insisted the yeti was nothing more than a case of linguistic mistaken identity. Dr Matako Nabuka is a researcher and mountaineer who spent 12 years in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan conducting, he says, research into the elusive abominable snowman. Hackles began to rise in Kathmandu earlier this month when Dr Nabuka told a press conference in Tokyo yetis were not mysterious apes or hairy hominids living in the High Himalaya. They were, quite simply, Himalayan brown bear, known in a regional Tibetan dialect as "meti", he said. "This has spread too far," said Dr Nabuka, referring to belief in the yeti. Many claim to have seen it, he said, but no one has proof. The tribes of the Himalayas worship the brown bear as a deity, Dr Nabuka pointed out, and have endowed it with supernatural powers. He said he had pictures of bear paws and other artefacts from the animal being venerated by mountain tribes people.

But no sooner had the story hit the Nepali press than local opinion chimed in. A letter to the editor of the Kathmandu Post headlined "Yetiquette" took Dr Nabuka to task for linguistic carelessness.

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