ODDSEAMINDEPENDENT FIELD ARCHIVE

Case file CR-0057 · land

The mande barung

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TESTED · GOAT

land / Garo Hills, Meghalaya, India

The Hairs Belonged To A Goral

The modern file begins in the late 1990s with an Achik Tourism Society campaign. Sightings followed, and in 2007 a district administration announced a study whose results were never published; and in 2008 the BBC was handed hair from a claimed sighting site. It was examined microscopically, inconclusively, then sequenced: Himalayan goral, a goat-antelope. The wrinkle is that the site sits well south of the goral's known range. The report often cited for this creature, a 1948 paper in the Bombay Natural History Society's journal, could not be retrieved, and should not be cited as verified.

A tourism society, a study nobody published, and one goat. That is the whole record.

Source on file
BBC News, October 2008 (archived)

AI illustration · imagined scene, not an evidence photograph — The mande barung
AI illustration · imagined scene, not an evidence photograph
File
CR-0057
Date
1990s → 2008
Place
Garo Hills, Meghalaya, India
Record
woodcutters, foresters and villagers across three districts
Evidence
Hair, DNA-tested; no photograph, no specimen
Agency
BBC investigation; Oxford Brookes; a US laboratory
Assessment
C · the only tested item was a known animal

The full file

The mande barung is the "forest man" of the Garo Hills in western Meghalaya, a large, hairy, upright animal described by woodcutters, forest staff and villagers in the West, South and East Garo Hills districts. The name is spelled two ways in the record: the BBC wrote mande barung, while the Indian press and the news agencies wrote mande burung. The modern file is short, and nearly all of it is testimony gathered by one local society and one visiting journalist.

What was reported

The Achik Tourism Society, based in Tura, the West Garo Hills district headquarters, has collected sightings since 1997. Its general secretary, Dipu N. Marak, told the Hindustan Times in June 2007 that the society had been documenting sightings "and telltale signs such as giant footprints" since that year. Its president, Taseng K. Marak, saw the creature as a way to promote tourism in Nokrek and Balpakram National Park.

Three accounts carry most of the weight. In April 2002, according to the BBC, the forestry officer James Marak was one of 14 officials counting tigers in Balpakram when they saw what they took to be the animal. In November 2003 the woodcutter Nelbison Sangma, who works on the edge of Nokrek, said he saw it on three days running, about 8 ft tall and breaking branches. In June 2007 the farmer Wallen Sangma told the Indo-Asian News Service that he had seen four of the creatures, 30 to 40 metres away, while collecting firewood near the village of Rongcekgre. Dipu Marak's own description, as the BBC gave it, is a black and grey animal about 3 m tall, weighing about 300 kg and living on fruit, roots and bark.

The evidence and where it went

There is no photograph, film or body. The society said in 2007 that it had photographed and filmed footprints 13 to 15 inches long; those images have not been published in any source traced here. The single physical item is a small sample of hair. Dipu Marak collected it at a site in dense jungle where, the BBC was told, a forester had seen the animal on three days in a row in 2003. The BBC's June 2008 report gives that three-day sighting to the woodcutter Nelbison Sangma, not to a forester; the two descriptions may refer to one event, but the sources do not settle it. Marak gave the hairs to the BBC reporter Alastair Lawson during a visit in 2008. Where they are now is not published.

What investigators concluded

In July 2008 the primatologist Ian Redmond, with Anna Nekaris and the microscopy specialist Jon Wells of Oxford Brookes University, examined two of the hairs at up to 200 times magnification. They compared them with reference hairs from Oxford's Natural History Museum and the university's primatology collection, and ruled out Asiatic black bear, wild boar and several macaques. The scientists called the first results "potentially very exciting", and Redmond noted a resemblance to hairs Sir Edmund Hillary had brought back to Britain. The result was formally inconclusive.

The hairs were then sent to an unnamed laboratory in the United States for DNA testing. On 13 October 2008 the BBC reported the result: the hairs came from a Himalayan goral, Naemorhedus goral, a goat-antelope. Mongabay reported the same finding the next day.

The only official step on record is smaller than often claimed. In June 2007 Samphat Kumar, district magistrate of West Garo Hills, said that "a team of wildlife officials and other experts" would study the villagers' claims, as reported by both AFP and IANS. No report from that team has been found. In 2008 the senior forestry officer P. R. Marak told the BBC that the department had not ruled the creature out, but that "Garo people love myths".

The leading explanation

The conventional explanation is misidentification of known animals in very thick forest, helped by a widely known yeti template. The candidates are present. Nokrek's site record lists the Asiatic black bear, the hoolock gibbon, the rhesus and stump-tailed macaques and the serow. The strength of this reading is that it needs nothing new, and the one tested item did turn out to be a known animal. Its weakness is that no specific sighting has been matched to a specific animal. The goral result also tests only the hair, not the sightings. Redmond himself said the link between the hairs and the sightings was "purely circumstantial".

What remains disputed

The goral result has its own loose end. Redmond pointed out that the collection site lies well south of the goral's published range, which the BBC gave as 1,000 to 4,000 metres in the Himalayas, and suggested the find might extend that range. Goral taxonomy is unsettled, and the Mammal Diversity Database lists a separate species, the Burmese goral (Naemorhedus evansi), for Myanmar, China and Thailand, with India and Bangladesh only queried. A related goat-antelope, the serow, is recorded at Nokrek. Without the sequence, which was not published, it is not possible to say which goral the hairs came from, or whether contamination or a mislabelled sample played a part.

The society's earlier claims are also loose. A 1948 note by E. P. Gee in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society is often cited as the first record; it could not be found, and it should not be treated as verified. The footprint photographs and films have never been published for examination.

Sources

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