There is no smoke without a fire. And there is no footprint without a foot. And there is no foot without the animal of which it is a part. So with the latest discovery of the mysterious footprints, the age old debate on which animal imprinted it has come to the fore, once again.

In November this year, a U.S.-based television channel investigating the existence of the legendary Yeti in Nepal found three large, footprints. One print was clearly from a right foot with five toes, and was about 13 inches long, but the other two were only partial prints. The footprints were found on rock and sand.

The TV channel airs a weekly adventure series called “Destination Truth” that investigates stories of the unexplained and crypto-zoological creatures (animals believed to exist, but for which conclusive evidence is missing).

A team of nine producers from Destination Truth, armed with infrared cameras, spent a week in the icy Khumbu region at a height of 2,850 metres (9,350 feet). The footprints were found on the bank of the Manju river.

The host of the show, Josh Gates an archaeologist by training said that the prints were fresh, left perhaps just 24 hours before they were found. The team has taken plaster cast of the footprints. These would be sent to experts in the United States for analysis.

Does the Yeti really exist? Could the foot prints have been made by some known animal? Or were they all just a hoax? No one knows for sure.

But many believe that the Yeti is a bi-pedal (two legged) giant, hairy apelike animal inhabiting the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. The locals are sure it exists and the names Yeti and Meh-Teh are part of their history and mythology.

Nepalese have various names for Yeti like "wild man" and "Kanchanjunga's demon”.

An early record of reported foot prints appeared in 1889 in the writings of the Britsih explorer L.A.Waddell. In the early 20th century, when more westerners started scaling the Himalayan mountains, many mountaineers reported seeing odd creatures or strange tracks.

In 1951 Eric Shipton a distinguished British expeditioner took photographs of a number of large prints in the snow, at about 6,000 m (19,685 ft). These photos have been studied very closely and the results intensely debated. While some say they are the best evidence of Yeti's existence, others hold that the foot prints were of some ordinary creature. They looked big and different because they had been distorted and widened by the melting snow.

While Edmund Hillary did not believe in the existence of the snowman, another great mountaineer Reinhold Messner claimed to have had a face-to-face encounter with a Yeti which he killed. According to Messner, the Yeti is actually the endangered Himalayan Brown Bear, that can walk upright or on all fours.

But Josh Gates of the Destination Truth is emphatic that the latest footprints discovered were not made by a Bear.

The interesting debate will continue till someone captures this secretive creature on camera. Then the world will know for sure what kind of animal the abominable snowman really is.