Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast, am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to George Nor with you. Let me
Speaker 2: tell you a little bit about Maria Mayor. Doctor Hail
Speaker 2: did by The New York Times as the female Indiana
Speaker 2: Jones and referred to as her Wildness Doctor. Maria Mayor
Speaker 2: as a world renowned primatologist, author pink books, Boots and
Speaker 2: a Machete, one of her books, Explorer, television host as
Speaker 2: National Geographics first female wildlife correspondent. She has hosted dozens
Speaker 2: of documentaries, including her own National Geographic wild series Wild
Speaker 2: Nights with Maria Mayor, Mark Burnett's Expedition Africa for History Channel,
Speaker 2: currently starring in Discovery Channel hit series Expedition Bigfoot. A
Speaker 2: former NFL cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins, daughter of Cuban immigrants,
Speaker 2: and mother of six, She's not your typical scientist, Maria.
Speaker 2: Welcome the program, first time for you, right, Hi.
Speaker 3: George, Yes it is. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: What a tremendous career you've had. How did you go
Speaker 2: from being a cheerleader to a PhD.
Speaker 3: Well, let's see, that's an interesting trajectory and very unusual.
Speaker 3: I was a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins for four
Speaker 3: years while I attended the University of Miami, and while
Speaker 3: I was actually in a pre law program, I took
Speaker 3: an anthropology class just to fulfill a science requirement, and
Speaker 3: I just I fell in love when it came to
Speaker 3: primates that were critically endangered and on the verge of disappearing.
Speaker 3: And that's what changed my entire life. I basically watched
Speaker 3: gorillas in the mist and I saw Diane Fosse just
Speaker 3: cuddling up to these majestic creatures, the mountain gorillas in Rwanda,
Speaker 3: and I thought, right, that's what I want to do
Speaker 3: for the rest of my life. And so off I went,
Speaker 3: not to Africa at first, but to South America, and
Speaker 3: I went on my own expedition. That was the very
Speaker 3: first one when I was about twenty two years old.
Speaker 3: And well the rest is history.
Speaker 2: Good for you now, the PhD is in what field?
Speaker 3: It's an anthropology? Wow?
Speaker 2: Okay, great of all the primates that are out there,
Speaker 2: how did you get involved with Bigfoot?
Speaker 3: So my work has taken me all over the world,
Speaker 3: always in search of very rare and elusive animals. In fact,
Speaker 3: some of them had never even been photographed, they'd never
Speaker 3: been studied. Most people deemed it impossible that I would
Speaker 3: ever find them, and I did, and so on one
Speaker 3: particular expedition, I was in Madagascar and I discovered the
Speaker 3: world's smallest primates ay, a tiny little primate that weighs
Speaker 3: less than two ounces. It basically fits in the palm
Speaker 3: of your hand. And one of the producers of the
Speaker 3: show that was assembling the team reached out to me
Speaker 3: and said, we really want you to join the Expedition
Speaker 3: Bigfoot team because you discovered the world's smallest primate. We
Speaker 3: want you to go full circle and possibly discover the
Speaker 3: world's largest. So that's all I'm involved.
Speaker 2: Did you love science when you were a kid.
Speaker 3: I loved animals. When I was a kid, I was
Speaker 3: not necessarily, I was very I was a little girly girl,
Speaker 3: and I was the daughter of Cuban immigrants, which you
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, so my mom was extremely overprotective. I remember
Speaker 3: asking her if I could join the Girl Scouts when
Speaker 3: I was little, and she said, absolutely not, that's way
Speaker 3: too dangerous. So I never imagined I would become a scientist.
Speaker 3: I think I thought i'd have a more traditional career
Speaker 3: path like a teacher or a nurse. I was set
Speaker 3: to be a lawyer when I got to college. But
Speaker 3: my past was actually a little bit of an obsession
Speaker 3: for animals. When I was a kid, I basically had
Speaker 3: a zoo at home with dogs and cats and chickens, reptiles,
Speaker 3: all sorts of creepy crawlis that I just love to observe.
Speaker 3: I spent all my time up in a mango tree,
Speaker 3: you know, observing animal behavior. So that was my little obsession.
Speaker 3: I just didn't know that that would ever lead into
Speaker 3: a career.
Speaker 2: I'm going to assume your parents came here in the sixties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my mom was actually one of the first people
Speaker 3: out of Cuba. Apparently, when Fidel Castro made the announcement that,
Speaker 3: you know, anyone who wants to leave can leave tomorrow.
Speaker 3: My grandmother looked at my grandfather and said, we're leaving.
Speaker 3: We're leaving tomorrow, and they left everything behind and came
Speaker 3: to the US.
Speaker 2: That's pretty gutsy to be able to do that, isn't it.
Speaker 3: My grandmother was unbelievably gutsy. And it's funny because there's
Speaker 3: this there's a photograph that was taken of my mom
Speaker 3: boarding with with nothing, you know, obviously, just the clothes
Speaker 3: on her back, and she was looking out over the
Speaker 3: boat as she stepped on, and for as overprotective as
Speaker 3: she was on me, she was an explorer in her
Speaker 3: own right, because you know, there she was setting sale
Speaker 3: to a place she'd never been, a language she didn't speak,
Speaker 3: and basically starting over with nothing. So yeah, very very bold.
Speaker 2: Of all the primates you've studied, which one would you
Speaker 2: say you're a specialist.
Speaker 3: In, Uh, well, lemurs, I suppose in Madagascar. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've seen the movie Madagascar. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of animals in the movie that aren't actually in Madagascar,
Speaker 3: but the you know, King Julian, the Lemur, the ringtail Leamer,
Speaker 3: those are the ones that I spent the majority of
Speaker 3: my life studying. And then gorillas in Congo and Rwanda
Speaker 3: were probably the next second.
Speaker 2: And lemurs kind of explain what they look like.
Speaker 3: Lemurs are. They're odd creatures. I mean, they're primates, so
Speaker 3: there's one of our closest living relatives. But they look
Speaker 3: like something out of a Doctor Seuss book, if you will.
Speaker 3: They're all they're almost whimsical looking animals and there's a
Speaker 3: great variety of them, many of which are nocturnal, so
Speaker 3: they have these huge, huge eyes and typically smaller in
Speaker 3: size than you know, some of the larger monkeys or
Speaker 3: the apes, of course, but they're just fascinating animals. I
Speaker 3: remember the first time I went to Madagascar, for as
Speaker 3: exotic as a place as it is, I stepped off
Speaker 3: the plane and it felt like home. And the lemurs
Speaker 3: just they captured my heart, they captured my imagination, and
Speaker 3: I ended up spending most of my adult life living
Speaker 3: there studying them.
Speaker 2: In this little mouse lemur that you were able to find,
Speaker 2: how small are they?
Speaker 3: How small are they? They weigh less than two ounces
Speaker 3: and they fit in the palm of your hand, So
Speaker 3: I would I would say, they're they're pretty small.
Speaker 2: How about the size of a mouse.
Speaker 3: Right about the size of a mouth.
Speaker 2: Yes, then they look like little monkeys.
Speaker 3: They actually if you saw it running through your kitchen,
Speaker 3: you would think there was a there was a mouse
Speaker 3: in your kitchen. But they have all the characteristics that
Speaker 3: make a primate a primate, like you know, five fingers
Speaker 3: and opposable thumbs, and you know, relatively larger brains compared
Speaker 3: to body size. You know, all the things that make
Speaker 3: primates primates, they have, but they look kind of like
Speaker 3: a little mouse.
Speaker 2: Of all the expeditions you've been on, what has been
Speaker 2: some of the scariest for.
Speaker 3: You, Oh gosh. I get asked that a lot, and
Speaker 3: most people think I'm going to respond with, uh, like
Speaker 3: an animal, But it's actually been people made it this.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been charged by, I mean really like
Speaker 3: dozens of silver backed gorillas, which you know, it gets
Speaker 3: your adrenaline up every time. It doesn't matter how many
Speaker 3: times you've been charged by gorilla, You're adrenaline goes up.
Speaker 3: They're incredibly you know, large, sort of imposing, very very
Speaker 3: strong animals. And the same thing with forest elephants. I've
Speaker 3: been chased by forest elephants. That's pretty scary. But in Congo,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a lot of political warfare. It's it's
Speaker 3: it can be rather unstable and dangerous and sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: a little regard for human life. And so I've been
Speaker 3: in some pretty precarious situations in Congo. One situation in particular,
Speaker 3: where there were about five or six armed soldiers and
Speaker 3: one of them took my passport from me and said
Speaker 3: that it wasn't me in the passport right and tossed
Speaker 3: it to the side into a ditch, and I really
Speaker 3: wasn't sure if I was making it out of there.
Speaker 3: And then in Congo again, I was taking a flight,
Speaker 3: just having left the expedition in the forest, and the
Speaker 3: plane went down and so I survived the plane crash there.
Speaker 3: It turns out somewhat of a funny story, I suppose
Speaker 3: a because I survived, But also in hindsight, the plane
Speaker 3: was filled with nuns. And I remember when the when
Speaker 3: the plane started going down and all this airline storesses
Speaker 3: were in the sort of plane crash, you know position.
Speaker 3: I looked around me and all the nuns were praying,
Speaker 3: And somehow I think it worked because here I am.
Speaker 2: If you're going to go down on a plane, you
Speaker 2: want to go down with a bunch of nuns, That's for.
Speaker 3: Sure, you really do, you know? I'd never kind of
Speaker 3: orchestrated the idea of how would I want to go
Speaker 3: down in a plane? But that's that's the way. The
Speaker 3: funny thing is is that once we had to crash
Speaker 3: and we managed to get off the plane and we
Speaker 3: were waiting around. We were in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 3: I mean there were no villages to be found anywhere
Speaker 3: where we where we crashed, and somehow sort of words
Speaker 3: spread and a couple of vehicles, pickup trucks started coming
Speaker 3: in and getting people out, and finally a vehicle came
Speaker 3: that I was able to jump in the back of
Speaker 3: a truck of and they they dropped me off at
Speaker 3: a at a brothel where I spent the next, you know,
Speaker 3: a few nights trying to figure out how to how
Speaker 3: to leave. But I'll tell you what it was. I
Speaker 3: put my head on that pillow and I smelled some
Speaker 3: sort of you know, cheap chanel number five it was.
Speaker 3: And just the fact that I could smell that made
Speaker 3: it the most amazing sense ever. Couldn't be happier to
Speaker 3: be alive at that point. Go ahead, No, I was
Speaker 3: going to say, the adventure didn't end on the plane crash.
Speaker 2: No. Your website, of course. Do you take emails through
Speaker 2: your website?
Speaker 3: I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 2: You've got a lot of people that want to reach you.
Speaker 3: Okay, it sounds good. It's Maria Mayor dot com. And
Speaker 3: you can certainly send me an email through there also
Speaker 3: on Instagram a lot. I'm a lot better about checking
Speaker 3: the messages.
Speaker 2: There are the great apes much like a human.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, sometimes when I watch, especially gorillas, there's almost this
Speaker 3: feeling like I should turn away, Like you know, if
Speaker 3: you went up to your neighbor's window and you were
Speaker 3: peeking in and then be suddenly, you know, a family
Speaker 3: started fighting or something, and you started watching all these
Speaker 3: dynamics and overhearing things that you shouldn't be hearing. That's
Speaker 3: a lot of the times what it feels like when
Speaker 3: you're observing gorillas, Like their family groups are so similar
Speaker 3: to ours. If you've ever gone to a zoo, you
Speaker 3: would see the Western Lowland gorilla, which is the gorilla
Speaker 3: that I mainly studied in Congo, but they're actually the
Speaker 3: least known ape in the wild, but in the zoos.
Speaker 3: If you've ever taken the time to stand there and
Speaker 3: look at a gorilla, you'll notice that they really look
Speaker 3: back at you, not just like they're not like other
Speaker 3: animals might look at you, but like there's thoughts behind.
Speaker 2: Motion. There isn't there there.
Speaker 3: Really is, there's intent. They're watching you in the same
Speaker 3: way that you're watching them. And primates in general are
Speaker 3: incredibly curious animals, and you know, gorillas like humans are
Speaker 3: are very h they're very curious. They all have very
Speaker 3: distinctive personalities. You know, there are some pretty funny gorillas,
Speaker 3: shy gorillas, mean gorillas, you know, bitchy gorillas like all
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: Are they are they Are they aggressive?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say so. No, it feels like it when
Speaker 3: the silver back rate charges you, But they're they're really
Speaker 3: It's generally a bluff charge for the most part. I
Speaker 3: think I only had one incident where I was pretty
Speaker 3: sure the gorilla meant it and I was gonna, you know,
Speaker 3: rip my head off. But the rest of the time,
Speaker 3: they're they're just letting you know that they're in charge
Speaker 3: and that they're stronger than you, and you know, believe me,
Speaker 3: that message comes across very clearly. But they're not aggressive animals. Chimps,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, can be terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean chimps for as just you know, incredibly beautiful
Speaker 3: and interesting to watch, they can be incredibly Machavelian in
Speaker 3: how they and how they decide to attack right like
Speaker 3: they're they're they're hunters in the wild, and they strategize
Speaker 3: their hunts. I mean it's like they have you know,
Speaker 3: animals that are in positions to chase the prey and
Speaker 3: others that are there to entrap the prey, and then
Speaker 3: the other one that's there to kill the prey. And
Speaker 3: they really can be They can be very aggressive.
Speaker 2: They go after human body parts, don't they They can
Speaker 2: rip them off your body.
Speaker 3: Like they would a little monkey that they're hunting for. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: Whereas you know, gorillas, they're known as gentle giants, which
Speaker 3: I really think they earned that title. I mean, they're
Speaker 3: pretty they're vegetarians, right, they're not interested in meat and
Speaker 3: they're not hunting, although you know, you could get injured
Speaker 3: for sure by a gorilla. I had a gorilla in
Speaker 3: uh in Congo that got one of the trackers who
Speaker 3: she was very used to because we were out there
Speaker 3: every single day, and just grabbed him and bit him
Speaker 3: in the knee, you know, toward his kneecap. And it
Speaker 3: was just out of the blue shoes, in a bad
Speaker 3: mood that day, and he was standing in the wrong
Speaker 3: place at the wrong time. So you know, they're certainly
Speaker 3: capable of it. But it's not like a chimp. I
Speaker 3: find I find myself more uneasy around chimps than I
Speaker 3: do gorillas. I'm pretty relaxed around gorillas.
Speaker 2: Have you come across a gigantapithecus, not that I know of,
Speaker 2: supposed to be it's supposed to be an ape in Florida.
Speaker 2: Cryptozoologist told us about that when he was looking for Bigfoot,
Speaker 2: he came across one of these things.
Speaker 3: Well, the gigantopithecus has been extinct for for quite a
Speaker 3: long time, so I'm not sure how old he was
Speaker 3: when you interviewed him, but maybe he found a fossil
Speaker 3: or something. But that would be pretty remarkable. I mean,
Speaker 3: we've lost so many of sort of these great big animals,
Speaker 3: Like in Madagascar, for example, there was a lemur the
Speaker 3: size of a gorilla that was hunted out only a
Speaker 3: couple thousand years ago when humans first came onto the island.
Speaker 3: But what a spectacular sight that would have been to see.
Speaker 3: So we've we've lost a lot of these major animals,
Speaker 3: which is kind of what makes Bigfoot so fascinating, right,
Speaker 3: the fact that there could be this North American ape,
Speaker 3: you know, larger by reports, right, larger than even the
Speaker 3: known apes that we already know about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get into Bigfoot after the break that it's
Speaker 2: an incredible creature, but you've heard of the abominable Snowman
Speaker 2: in the Himalayas, I have, yes, is that similar to Bigfoot?
Speaker 3: So there's a lot yes, in theory, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of different names of course that is attributed to Bigfoot, like,
Speaker 3: for example, in Florida it's the skunk Gape, there's the Yawie.
Speaker 3: In Australia uh sasquatch Bigfoot, and then there's the the
Speaker 3: Yetti And of course by by reports, it's different in color, right,
Speaker 3: it's always depicted as all white, and that would have
Speaker 3: to do with the landscape and the habitat. And of
Speaker 3: course we do see that in nature where animals adapt
Speaker 3: to their environments and they use different you know, color
Speaker 3: patterns on the external of externally to camouflage and blend
Speaker 3: into their environment. So it would make sense that something
Speaker 3: like a Bigfoot living in in snow right in the
Speaker 3: mountain snow would be all white as it's described.
Speaker 2: Murray, have you ever been in a situation where the
Speaker 2: place was laden with mosquitoes?
Speaker 3: Oh, my goodness, so many times. I mean in the
Speaker 3: Amazon in Africa, but also even in our Bigfoot expeditions,
Speaker 3: you know in northern California, certain parts in Kentucky. It
Speaker 3: was mosquitoes and ticks, just completely laden with.
Speaker 2: Them, two of the worst insects made by God.
Speaker 3: Huh. I mean seriously, as much as I love animals,
Speaker 3: I am, I'm good to eradicate ticks and mosquitoes.
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