December 4, 2024 • 18 mins
George Noory and Dr. Mireya Mayor explore her journey from being an NFL cheerleader to becoming an accomplished primatologist and explorer, her work studying apes in the wild, and some of her scariest expeditions like being charged at by a gorilla and surviving a plane crash.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast, am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to George Nor with you. Let me
tell you a little bit about Maria Mayor. Doctor Hail
did by The New York Times as the female Indiana
Jones and referred to as her Wildness Doctor. Maria Mayor
as a world renowned primatologist, author pink books, Boots and
a Machete, one of her books, Explorer, television host as
(00:29):
National Geographics first female wildlife correspondent. She has hosted dozens
of documentaries, including her own National Geographic wild series Wild
Nights with Maria Mayor, Mark Burnett's Expedition Africa for History Channel,
currently starring in Discovery Channel hit series Expedition Bigfoot. A
(00:50):
former NFL cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins, daughter of Cuban immigrants,
and mother of six, She's not your typical scientist, Maria.
Welcome the program, first time for you, right, Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
George, Yes it is. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
What a tremendous career you've had. How did you go
from being a cheerleader to a PhD.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, let's see, that's an interesting trajectory and very unusual.
I was a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins for four
years while I attended the University of Miami, and while
I was actually in a pre law program, I took
an anthropology class just to fulfill a science requirement, and
I just I fell in love when it came to
(01:36):
primates that were critically endangered and on the verge of disappearing.
And that's what changed my entire life. I basically watched
gorillas in the mist and I saw Diane Fosse just
cuddling up to these majestic creatures, the mountain gorillas in Rwanda,
and I thought, right, that's what I want to do
for the rest of my life. And so off I went,
(01:58):
not to Africa at first, but to South America, and
I went on my own expedition. That was the very
first one when I was about twenty two years old.
And well the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Good for you now, the PhD is in what field?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's an anthropology? Wow?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Okay, great of all the primates that are out there,
how did you get involved with Bigfoot?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
So my work has taken me all over the world,
always in search of very rare and elusive animals. In fact,
some of them had never even been photographed, they'd never
been studied. Most people deemed it impossible that I would
ever find them, and I did, and so on one
particular expedition, I was in Madagascar and I discovered the
(02:46):
world's smallest primates ay, a tiny little primate that weighs
less than two ounces. It basically fits in the palm
of your hand. And one of the producers of the
show that was assembling the team reached out to me
and said, we really want you to join the Expedition
Bigfoot team because you discovered the world's smallest primate. We
(03:09):
want you to go full circle and possibly discover the
world's largest. So that's all I'm involved.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Did you love science when you were a kid.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I loved animals. When I was a kid, I was
not necessarily, I was very I was a little girly girl,
and I was the daughter of Cuban immigrants, which you
mentioned earlier, so my mom was extremely overprotective. I remember
asking her if I could join the Girl Scouts when
(03:40):
I was little, and she said, absolutely not, that's way
too dangerous. So I never imagined I would become a scientist.
I think I thought i'd have a more traditional career
path like a teacher or a nurse. I was set
to be a lawyer when I got to college. But
my past was actually a little bit of an obsession
(04:02):
for animals. When I was a kid, I basically had
a zoo at home with dogs and cats and chickens, reptiles,
all sorts of creepy crawlis that I just love to observe.
I spent all my time up in a mango tree,
you know, observing animal behavior. So that was my little obsession.
I just didn't know that that would ever lead into
(04:22):
a career.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I'm going to assume your parents came here in the sixties.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, my mom was actually one of the first people
out of Cuba. Apparently, when Fidel Castro made the announcement that,
you know, anyone who wants to leave can leave tomorrow.
My grandmother looked at my grandfather and said, we're leaving.
We're leaving tomorrow, and they left everything behind and came
(04:50):
to the US.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's pretty gutsy to be able to do that, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
My grandmother was unbelievably gutsy. And it's funny because there's
this there's a photograph that was taken of my mom
boarding with with nothing, you know, obviously, just the clothes
on her back, and she was looking out over the
boat as she stepped on, and for as overprotective as
(05:15):
she was on me, she was an explorer in her
own right, because you know, there she was setting sale
to a place she'd never been, a language she didn't speak,
and basically starting over with nothing. So yeah, very very bold.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Of all the primates you've studied, which one would you
say you're a specialist.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
In, Uh, well, lemurs, I suppose in Madagascar. I don't
know if you've seen the movie Madagascar. There's a lot
of animals in the movie that aren't actually in Madagascar,
but the you know, King Julian, the Lemur, the ringtail Leamer,
those are the ones that I spent the majority of
my life studying. And then gorillas in Congo and Rwanda
(05:56):
were probably the next second.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
And lemurs kind of explain what they look like.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Lemurs are. They're odd creatures. I mean, they're primates, so
there's one of our closest living relatives. But they look
like something out of a Doctor Seuss book, if you will.
They're all they're almost whimsical looking animals and there's a
great variety of them, many of which are nocturnal, so
(06:26):
they have these huge, huge eyes and typically smaller in
size than you know, some of the larger monkeys or
the apes, of course, but they're just fascinating animals. I
remember the first time I went to Madagascar, for as
exotic as a place as it is, I stepped off
(06:48):
the plane and it felt like home. And the lemurs
just they captured my heart, they captured my imagination, and
I ended up spending most of my adult life living
there studying them.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
In this little mouse lemur that you were able to find,
how small are they?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
How small are they? They weigh less than two ounces
and they fit in the palm of your hand, So
I would I would say, they're they're pretty small.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
How about the size of a mouse.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Right about the size of a mouth.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yes, then they look like little monkeys.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
They actually if you saw it running through your kitchen,
you would think there was a there was a mouse
in your kitchen. But they have all the characteristics that
make a primate a primate, like you know, five fingers
and opposable thumbs, and you know, relatively larger brains compared
(07:48):
to body size. You know, all the things that make
primates primates, they have, but they look kind of like
a little mouse.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Of all the expeditions you've been on, what has been
some of the scariest for.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
You, Oh gosh. I get asked that a lot, and
most people think I'm going to respond with, uh, like
an animal, But it's actually been people made it this.
You know, I've been charged by, I mean really like
(08:21):
dozens of silver backed gorillas, which you know, it gets
your adrenaline up every time. It doesn't matter how many
times you've been charged by gorilla, You're adrenaline goes up.
They're incredibly you know, large, sort of imposing, very very
strong animals. And the same thing with forest elephants. I've
been chased by forest elephants. That's pretty scary. But in Congo,
(08:44):
you know, there's a lot of political warfare. It's it's
it can be rather unstable and dangerous and sometimes you know,
a little regard for human life. And so I've been
in some pretty precarious situations in Congo. One situation in particular,
where there were about five or six armed soldiers and
(09:08):
one of them took my passport from me and said
that it wasn't me in the passport right and tossed
it to the side into a ditch, and I really
wasn't sure if I was making it out of there.
And then in Congo again, I was taking a flight,
just having left the expedition in the forest, and the
(09:32):
plane went down and so I survived the plane crash there.
It turns out somewhat of a funny story, I suppose
a because I survived, But also in hindsight, the plane
was filled with nuns. And I remember when the when
the plane started going down and all this airline storesses
(09:52):
were in the sort of plane crash, you know position.
I looked around me and all the nuns were praying,
And somehow I think it worked because here I am.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
If you're going to go down on a plane, you
want to go down with a bunch of nuns, That's for.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Sure, you really do, you know? I'd never kind of
orchestrated the idea of how would I want to go
down in a plane? But that's that's the way. The
funny thing is is that once we had to crash
and we managed to get off the plane and we
were waiting around. We were in the middle of nowhere,
I mean there were no villages to be found anywhere
(10:30):
where we where we crashed, and somehow sort of words
spread and a couple of vehicles, pickup trucks started coming
in and getting people out, and finally a vehicle came
that I was able to jump in the back of
a truck of and they they dropped me off at
a at a brothel where I spent the next, you know,
(10:50):
a few nights trying to figure out how to how
to leave. But I'll tell you what it was. I
put my head on that pillow and I smelled some
sort of you know, cheap chanel number five it was.
And just the fact that I could smell that made
it the most amazing sense ever. Couldn't be happier to
be alive at that point. Go ahead, No, I was
(11:13):
going to say, the adventure didn't end on the plane crash.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
No. Your website, of course. Do you take emails through
your website?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You've got a lot of people that want to reach you.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Okay, it sounds good. It's Maria Mayor dot com. And
you can certainly send me an email through there also
on Instagram a lot. I'm a lot better about checking
the messages.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
There are the great apes much like a human.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Absolutely, sometimes when I watch, especially gorillas, there's almost this
feeling like I should turn away, Like you know, if
you went up to your neighbor's window and you were
peeking in and then be suddenly, you know, a family
started fighting or something, and you started watching all these
dynamics and overhearing things that you shouldn't be hearing. That's
(12:09):
a lot of the times what it feels like when
you're observing gorillas, Like their family groups are so similar
to ours. If you've ever gone to a zoo, you
would see the Western Lowland gorilla, which is the gorilla
that I mainly studied in Congo, but they're actually the
least known ape in the wild, but in the zoos.
(12:31):
If you've ever taken the time to stand there and
look at a gorilla, you'll notice that they really look
back at you, not just like they're not like other
animals might look at you, but like there's thoughts behind.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Motion. There isn't there there.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Really is, there's intent. They're watching you in the same
way that you're watching them. And primates in general are
incredibly curious animals, and you know, gorillas like humans are
are very h they're very curious. They all have very
distinctive personalities. You know, there are some pretty funny gorillas,
(13:12):
shy gorillas, mean gorillas, you know, bitchy gorillas like all
of it.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Are they are they Are they aggressive?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I wouldn't say so. No, it feels like it when
the silver back rate charges you, But they're they're really
It's generally a bluff charge for the most part. I
think I only had one incident where I was pretty
sure the gorilla meant it and I was gonna, you know,
rip my head off. But the rest of the time,
they're they're just letting you know that they're in charge
(13:43):
and that they're stronger than you, and you know, believe me,
that message comes across very clearly. But they're not aggressive animals. Chimps,
on the other hand, can be terrifying.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I mean chimps for as just you know, incredibly beautiful
and interesting to watch, they can be incredibly Machavelian in
how they and how they decide to attack right like
they're they're they're hunters in the wild, and they strategize
(14:18):
their hunts. I mean it's like they have you know,
animals that are in positions to chase the prey and
others that are there to entrap the prey, and then
the other one that's there to kill the prey. And
they really can be They can be very aggressive.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
They go after human body parts, don't they They can
rip them off your body.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Like they would a little monkey that they're hunting for. Absolutely,
Whereas you know, gorillas, they're known as gentle giants, which
I really think they earned that title. I mean, they're
pretty they're vegetarians, right, they're not interested in meat and
they're not hunting, although you know, you could get injured
(15:02):
for sure by a gorilla. I had a gorilla in
uh in Congo that got one of the trackers who
she was very used to because we were out there
every single day, and just grabbed him and bit him
in the knee, you know, toward his kneecap. And it
was just out of the blue shoes, in a bad
mood that day, and he was standing in the wrong
(15:22):
place at the wrong time. So you know, they're certainly
capable of it. But it's not like a chimp. I
find I find myself more uneasy around chimps than I
do gorillas. I'm pretty relaxed around gorillas.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Have you come across a gigantapithecus, not that I know of,
supposed to be it's supposed to be an ape in Florida.
Cryptozoologist told us about that when he was looking for Bigfoot,
he came across one of these things.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Well, the gigantopithecus has been extinct for for quite a
long time, so I'm not sure how old he was
when you interviewed him, but maybe he found a fossil
or something. But that would be pretty remarkable. I mean,
we've lost so many of sort of these great big animals,
Like in Madagascar, for example, there was a lemur the
(16:18):
size of a gorilla that was hunted out only a
couple thousand years ago when humans first came onto the island.
But what a spectacular sight that would have been to see.
So we've we've lost a lot of these major animals,
which is kind of what makes Bigfoot so fascinating, right,
the fact that there could be this North American ape,
(16:42):
you know, larger by reports, right, larger than even the
known apes that we already know about.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, we'll get into Bigfoot after the break that it's
an incredible creature, but you've heard of the abominable Snowman
in the Himalayas, I have, yes, is that similar to Bigfoot?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
So there's a lot yes, in theory, there's a lot
of different names of course that is attributed to Bigfoot, like,
for example, in Florida it's the skunk Gape, there's the Yawie.
In Australia uh sasquatch Bigfoot, and then there's the the
(17:25):
Yetti And of course by by reports, it's different in color, right,
it's always depicted as all white, and that would have
to do with the landscape and the habitat. And of
course we do see that in nature where animals adapt
to their environments and they use different you know, color
(17:46):
patterns on the external of externally to camouflage and blend
into their environment. So it would make sense that something
like a Bigfoot living in in snow right in the
mountain snow would be all white as it's described.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Murray, have you ever been in a situation where the
place was laden with mosquitoes?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Oh, my goodness, so many times. I mean in the
Amazon in Africa, but also even in our Bigfoot expeditions,
you know in northern California, certain parts in Kentucky. It
was mosquitoes and ticks, just completely laden with.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Them, two of the worst insects made by God.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Huh. I mean seriously, as much as I love animals,
I am, I'm good to eradicate ticks and mosquitoes.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from coast to coast, am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to George Nor with you. Let me
tell you a little bit about Maria Mayor. Doctor Hail
did by The New York Times as the female Indiana
Jones and referred to as her Wildness Doctor. Maria Mayor
as a world renowned primatologist, author pink books, Boots and
a Machete, one of her books, Explorer, television host as
(00:29):
National Geographics first female wildlife correspondent. She has hosted dozens
of documentaries, including her own National Geographic wild series Wild
Nights with Maria Mayor, Mark Burnett's Expedition Africa for History Channel,
currently starring in Discovery Channel hit series Expedition Bigfoot. A
(00:50):
former NFL cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins, daughter of Cuban immigrants,
and mother of six, She's not your typical scientist, Maria.
Welcome the program, first time for you, right, Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
George, Yes it is. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
What a tremendous career you've had. How did you go
from being a cheerleader to a PhD.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Well, let's see, that's an interesting trajectory and very unusual.
I was a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins for four
years while I attended the University of Miami, and while
I was actually in a pre law program, I took
an anthropology class just to fulfill a science requirement, and
I just I fell in love when it came to
(01:36):
primates that were critically endangered and on the verge of disappearing.
And that's what changed my entire life. I basically watched
gorillas in the mist and I saw Diane Fosse just
cuddling up to these majestic creatures, the mountain gorillas in Rwanda,
and I thought, right, that's what I want to do
for the rest of my life. And so off I went,
(01:58):
not to Africa at first, but to South America, and
I went on my own expedition. That was the very
first one when I was about twenty two years old.
And well the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Good for you now, the PhD is in what field?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
It's an anthropology? Wow?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Okay, great of all the primates that are out there,
how did you get involved with Bigfoot?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
So my work has taken me all over the world,
always in search of very rare and elusive animals. In fact,
some of them had never even been photographed, they'd never
been studied. Most people deemed it impossible that I would
ever find them, and I did, and so on one
particular expedition, I was in Madagascar and I discovered the
(02:46):
world's smallest primates ay, a tiny little primate that weighs
less than two ounces. It basically fits in the palm
of your hand. And one of the producers of the
show that was assembling the team reached out to me
and said, we really want you to join the Expedition
Bigfoot team because you discovered the world's smallest primate. We
(03:09):
want you to go full circle and possibly discover the
world's largest. So that's all I'm involved.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Did you love science when you were a kid.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I loved animals. When I was a kid, I was
not necessarily, I was very I was a little girly girl,
and I was the daughter of Cuban immigrants, which you
mentioned earlier, so my mom was extremely overprotective. I remember
asking her if I could join the Girl Scouts when
(03:40):
I was little, and she said, absolutely not, that's way
too dangerous. So I never imagined I would become a scientist.
I think I thought i'd have a more traditional career
path like a teacher or a nurse. I was set
to be a lawyer when I got to college. But
my past was actually a little bit of an obsession
(04:02):
for animals. When I was a kid, I basically had
a zoo at home with dogs and cats and chickens, reptiles,
all sorts of creepy crawlis that I just love to observe.
I spent all my time up in a mango tree,
you know, observing animal behavior. So that was my little obsession.
I just didn't know that that would ever lead into
(04:22):
a career.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I'm going to assume your parents came here in the sixties.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, my mom was actually one of the first people
out of Cuba. Apparently, when Fidel Castro made the announcement that,
you know, anyone who wants to leave can leave tomorrow.
My grandmother looked at my grandfather and said, we're leaving.
We're leaving tomorrow, and they left everything behind and came
(04:50):
to the US.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's pretty gutsy to be able to do that, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
My grandmother was unbelievably gutsy. And it's funny because there's
this there's a photograph that was taken of my mom
boarding with with nothing, you know, obviously, just the clothes
on her back, and she was looking out over the
boat as she stepped on, and for as overprotective as
(05:15):
she was on me, she was an explorer in her
own right, because you know, there she was setting sale
to a place she'd never been, a language she didn't speak,
and basically starting over with nothing. So yeah, very very bold.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Of all the primates you've studied, which one would you
say you're a specialist.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
In, Uh, well, lemurs, I suppose in Madagascar. I don't
know if you've seen the movie Madagascar. There's a lot
of animals in the movie that aren't actually in Madagascar,
but the you know, King Julian, the Lemur, the ringtail Leamer,
those are the ones that I spent the majority of
my life studying. And then gorillas in Congo and Rwanda
(05:56):
were probably the next second.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
And lemurs kind of explain what they look like.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Lemurs are. They're odd creatures. I mean, they're primates, so
there's one of our closest living relatives. But they look
like something out of a Doctor Seuss book, if you will.
They're all they're almost whimsical looking animals and there's a
great variety of them, many of which are nocturnal, so
(06:26):
they have these huge, huge eyes and typically smaller in
size than you know, some of the larger monkeys or
the apes, of course, but they're just fascinating animals. I
remember the first time I went to Madagascar, for as
exotic as a place as it is, I stepped off
(06:48):
the plane and it felt like home. And the lemurs
just they captured my heart, they captured my imagination, and
I ended up spending most of my adult life living
there studying them.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
In this little mouse lemur that you were able to find,
how small are they?
Speaker 3 (07:06):
How small are they? They weigh less than two ounces
and they fit in the palm of your hand, So
I would I would say, they're they're pretty small.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
How about the size of a mouse.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Right about the size of a mouth.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yes, then they look like little monkeys.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
They actually if you saw it running through your kitchen,
you would think there was a there was a mouse
in your kitchen. But they have all the characteristics that
make a primate a primate, like you know, five fingers
and opposable thumbs, and you know, relatively larger brains compared
(07:48):
to body size. You know, all the things that make
primates primates, they have, but they look kind of like
a little mouse.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Of all the expeditions you've been on, what has been
some of the scariest for.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
You, Oh gosh. I get asked that a lot, and
most people think I'm going to respond with, uh, like
an animal, But it's actually been people made it this.
You know, I've been charged by, I mean really like
(08:21):
dozens of silver backed gorillas, which you know, it gets
your adrenaline up every time. It doesn't matter how many
times you've been charged by gorilla, You're adrenaline goes up.
They're incredibly you know, large, sort of imposing, very very
strong animals. And the same thing with forest elephants. I've
been chased by forest elephants. That's pretty scary. But in Congo,
(08:44):
you know, there's a lot of political warfare. It's it's
it can be rather unstable and dangerous and sometimes you know,
a little regard for human life. And so I've been
in some pretty precarious situations in Congo. One situation in particular,
where there were about five or six armed soldiers and
(09:08):
one of them took my passport from me and said
that it wasn't me in the passport right and tossed
it to the side into a ditch, and I really
wasn't sure if I was making it out of there.
And then in Congo again, I was taking a flight,
just having left the expedition in the forest, and the
(09:32):
plane went down and so I survived the plane crash there.
It turns out somewhat of a funny story, I suppose
a because I survived, But also in hindsight, the plane
was filled with nuns. And I remember when the when
the plane started going down and all this airline storesses
(09:52):
were in the sort of plane crash, you know position.
I looked around me and all the nuns were praying,
And somehow I think it worked because here I am.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
If you're going to go down on a plane, you
want to go down with a bunch of nuns, That's for.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Sure, you really do, you know? I'd never kind of
orchestrated the idea of how would I want to go
down in a plane? But that's that's the way. The
funny thing is is that once we had to crash
and we managed to get off the plane and we
were waiting around. We were in the middle of nowhere,
I mean there were no villages to be found anywhere
(10:30):
where we where we crashed, and somehow sort of words
spread and a couple of vehicles, pickup trucks started coming
in and getting people out, and finally a vehicle came
that I was able to jump in the back of
a truck of and they they dropped me off at
a at a brothel where I spent the next, you know,
(10:50):
a few nights trying to figure out how to how
to leave. But I'll tell you what it was. I
put my head on that pillow and I smelled some
sort of you know, cheap chanel number five it was.
And just the fact that I could smell that made
it the most amazing sense ever. Couldn't be happier to
be alive at that point. Go ahead, No, I was
(11:13):
going to say, the adventure didn't end on the plane crash.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
No. Your website, of course. Do you take emails through
your website?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You've got a lot of people that want to reach you.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Okay, it sounds good. It's Maria Mayor dot com. And
you can certainly send me an email through there also
on Instagram a lot. I'm a lot better about checking
the messages.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
There are the great apes much like a human.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Absolutely, sometimes when I watch, especially gorillas, there's almost this
feeling like I should turn away, Like you know, if
you went up to your neighbor's window and you were
peeking in and then be suddenly, you know, a family
started fighting or something, and you started watching all these
dynamics and overhearing things that you shouldn't be hearing. That's
(12:09):
a lot of the times what it feels like when
you're observing gorillas, Like their family groups are so similar
to ours. If you've ever gone to a zoo, you
would see the Western Lowland gorilla, which is the gorilla
that I mainly studied in Congo, but they're actually the
least known ape in the wild, but in the zoos.
(12:31):
If you've ever taken the time to stand there and
look at a gorilla, you'll notice that they really look
back at you, not just like they're not like other
animals might look at you, but like there's thoughts behind.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Motion. There isn't there there.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Really is, there's intent. They're watching you in the same
way that you're watching them. And primates in general are
incredibly curious animals, and you know, gorillas like humans are
are very h they're very curious. They all have very
distinctive personalities. You know, there are some pretty funny gorillas,
(13:12):
shy gorillas, mean gorillas, you know, bitchy gorillas like all
of it.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Are they are they Are they aggressive?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I wouldn't say so. No, it feels like it when
the silver back rate charges you, But they're they're really
It's generally a bluff charge for the most part. I
think I only had one incident where I was pretty
sure the gorilla meant it and I was gonna, you know,
rip my head off. But the rest of the time,
they're they're just letting you know that they're in charge
(13:43):
and that they're stronger than you, and you know, believe me,
that message comes across very clearly. But they're not aggressive animals. Chimps,
on the other hand, can be terrifying.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I mean chimps for as just you know, incredibly beautiful
and interesting to watch, they can be incredibly Machavelian in
how they and how they decide to attack right like
they're they're they're hunters in the wild, and they strategize
(14:18):
their hunts. I mean it's like they have you know,
animals that are in positions to chase the prey and
others that are there to entrap the prey, and then
the other one that's there to kill the prey. And
they really can be They can be very aggressive.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
They go after human body parts, don't they They can
rip them off your body.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Like they would a little monkey that they're hunting for. Absolutely,
Whereas you know, gorillas, they're known as gentle giants, which
I really think they earned that title. I mean, they're
pretty they're vegetarians, right, they're not interested in meat and
they're not hunting, although you know, you could get injured
(15:02):
for sure by a gorilla. I had a gorilla in
uh in Congo that got one of the trackers who
she was very used to because we were out there
every single day, and just grabbed him and bit him
in the knee, you know, toward his kneecap. And it
was just out of the blue shoes, in a bad
mood that day, and he was standing in the wrong
(15:22):
place at the wrong time. So you know, they're certainly
capable of it. But it's not like a chimp. I
find I find myself more uneasy around chimps than I
do gorillas. I'm pretty relaxed around gorillas.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Have you come across a gigantapithecus, not that I know of,
supposed to be it's supposed to be an ape in Florida.
Cryptozoologist told us about that when he was looking for Bigfoot,
he came across one of these things.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Well, the gigantopithecus has been extinct for for quite a
long time, so I'm not sure how old he was
when you interviewed him, but maybe he found a fossil
or something. But that would be pretty remarkable. I mean,
we've lost so many of sort of these great big animals,
Like in Madagascar, for example, there was a lemur the
(16:18):
size of a gorilla that was hunted out only a
couple thousand years ago when humans first came onto the island.
But what a spectacular sight that would have been to see.
So we've we've lost a lot of these major animals,
which is kind of what makes Bigfoot so fascinating, right,
the fact that there could be this North American ape,
(16:42):
you know, larger by reports, right, larger than even the
known apes that we already know about.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, we'll get into Bigfoot after the break that it's
an incredible creature, but you've heard of the abominable Snowman
in the Himalayas, I have, yes, is that similar to Bigfoot?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
So there's a lot yes, in theory, there's a lot
of different names of course that is attributed to Bigfoot, like,
for example, in Florida it's the skunk Gape, there's the Yawie.
In Australia uh sasquatch Bigfoot, and then there's the the
(17:25):
Yetti And of course by by reports, it's different in color, right,
it's always depicted as all white, and that would have
to do with the landscape and the habitat. And of
course we do see that in nature where animals adapt
to their environments and they use different you know, color
(17:46):
patterns on the external of externally to camouflage and blend
into their environment. So it would make sense that something
like a Bigfoot living in in snow right in the
mountain snow would be all white as it's described.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Murray, have you ever been in a situation where the
place was laden with mosquitoes?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Oh, my goodness, so many times. I mean in the
Amazon in Africa, but also even in our Bigfoot expeditions,
you know in northern California, certain parts in Kentucky. It
was mosquitoes and ticks, just completely laden with.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Them, two of the worst insects made by God.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Huh. I mean seriously, as much as I love animals,
I am, I'm good to eradicate ticks and mosquitoes.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
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