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April 13, 2021 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
57:52
Edition 536 - Mireya Mayor
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Thank you for being part of my show.
Here we are in mid-April and looking forward to the springtime.
I'm not going to give you a weather update because it seems to change every half an hour here at the moment, but you know, hoping for better times as I think we all are.
Thank you very much to Adam, my webmaster, for his hard work on getting this show out to you and maintaining the website, theunexplained.tv.
And thank you to Haley for booking the guests, including the one that you're about to hear.
Mirea Meyer, a primatologist, conservationist, well known on television in the United States, for her series, Expedition Bigfoot.
But she's also known for an awful lot more stuff, too.
A correspondent on National Geographic's Ultimate Explorer TV series.
Some of the things that she's done, she went underwater with a six-foot-long humboat squid.
I think I remember that.
She tracked gorillas in Central Africa and worked with leopards in Namibia.
In 2000, Mireya co-discovered a new species of mouse lemur in Madagascar and convinced the leaders of that nation to declare the species habitat a national park.
So she's very persuasive.
A very important person I think we're going to have on this show.
We'll spend a lot of time talking about Bigfoot, but also about wildlife and nature in the round, as they say.
Maria Meyer, well known on television and on this show for the next hour here, The Unexplained.
Thank you very much for all of your nice comments.
Please keep the emails coming.
If you want to speak with me, well, at least through email, you can.
Go to the website, theunexplained.tv, follow the link, and you can send me an email from there.
And I get to see all of the emails.
And if your email requires a response, then it will certainly get one.
And if you were expecting one and you haven't had one, I'm getting a lot of email in at the moment.
Please send me a reminder.
Jog my memory and I'll get back to it.
And thank you very much for being there for me through all of this.
When you get in touch, by the way, you know what I'm going to say, don't you?
Tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
Thanks very much.
All right, let's get to the United States now.
And Mireya Meyer, we're going to talk about Bigfoot and an awful lot of other fascinating things.
Mirea, thank you very much for coming on my show.
How are you?
It's great to talk to you again.
Thank you.
I'm well.
How is Florida?
You know, we've just had an exodus of spring breakers, but it's usually very vibrant and sunny, and I'm loving it here.
Florida was quite badly affected, I think, at the worst of it by COVID.
Has it affected you?
Well, I think there's no one unaffected, really.
We have not had a case at home, knock on wood, but certainly the lockdowns and just the mental stress of it all has had a huge impact on us.
And of course, your work, Maria, is all about being out and about, traveling, going places.
That must have been very difficult this last year.
And that's probably been the toughest part for me personally, because I've, first of all, one of the things that I do is give lectures around the country and even internationally for National Geographic and for Florida International University.
And that, of course, has all been postponed.
And then there are my treks out into Africa and Madagascar, and all of those trips were also canceled.
And, you know, looking now to get back out into the field.
But yeah, it's been pretty tough.
Yeah, and Africa's so badly affected.
And I don't think we've seen the full effect in Africa yet, which is terribly sad, but will also restrict your ability to go there for a little while.
But hopefully things will return to some kind of normality sometime soon.
Which actually begs, and this is a little out of place here at this point, but I'll go get back on my train of thought after I've asked this.
You know, one of the things they say brought us to this situation where we have COVID-19, where we had coronavirus, is that mankind has been encroaching on the habitats of wild creatures.
We've been stealing their space.
So naturally, the great threat for the future, and I wonder if you have, before we start everything else, any thoughts on this, the great threat for the future is going to be diseases that cross the species barrier because we are stealing the territory of the creatures that harbor those diseases.
I mean, I think that's a point that is being made over and over.
You know, let's think about COVID for a second.
This is the one time that the world was basically brought to its knees.
You know, everything came to a halt.
People were forced to stay home.
And what we started seeing was sort of a recovery of the environment, if you will.
Places where it was so smog-filled that you couldn't see the mountains in the distance.
Suddenly you could see them.
Oceans, animals that you hadn't seen in years and years, they were suddenly visible.
And animals were really sort of coming out of hiding.
And they were going into big cities and towns and wandering through, probably wondering, you know, where'd everybody go?
So I think that this was maybe the only time in history where everything was shut down and animals were, you know, were free to roam and the environment was able to recover a bit.
And it really showed us how, A, how resilient nature can be and how by just doing a little bit less, you know, pulling back a little bit, we're able to really help our natural resources and our environment.
But also the power of nature, you know, the fact that everything could be shut down that way is pretty remarkable.
And so to your point, one of the biggest threats to animals, of course, is habitat loss, deforestation, habitat encroachment.
But I don't like to think of us, you know, humans, right, as sort of part of the circle, outside of the circle of animals.
I think that there is a way to coexist.
And we need to learn from this to see what are the best approaches to do that.
Because, in fact, scientists had been warning of a pandemic like this for a very long time and are still warning that this isn't even the worst to come, you know, if we don't change our ways.
Yep.
I think, you know, I'm completely on side with that thought, that if we don't heed this situation and the lessons and warnings from it, then I think sometime down the track, probably in our lifetimes, we're going to face this and worse again, which is worry.
And I wanted to ask you that first, because I think it is so apposite and so topical at the moment.
And it's something that we all need to give once we start emerging from all of this, which today, as I record this, we're taking baby steps, only baby steps, and we might have to reverse at some point.
But, you know, once we get back to thinking about things, we've got to think about this.
Okay, back on track with the conversation then.
You had and have had more than two decades of a science career, and you have gone down a path of popularizing this stuff, doing TV shows about Bigfoot and things like that.
I think that's terribly important, but it was obviously a clear decision that you made, was it?
To go down this route of popularization rather than sort of staying in academia.
Yeah, that's, and you bring up an interesting point because I actually, I very much started an academic, and it was while I was doing research in Madagascar on two of the most critically endangered, not just primates, but mammals, animals in the world.
National Geographic came to my field site and they were very interested in the research that I was doing.
And so I did my first ever documentary through them on the scientific work.
These were animals that had never been studied.
They'd never even been photographed.
And we were able to obtain information that had not been known before.
And shortly after I did this documentary, National Geographic hired me as their first female wildlife correspondent.
And, you know, I had some people in the academic community say that I shouldn't go down that route because as a scientist, you know, research and publishing is everything.
And this would really take me away from a lot of that.
But I really saw it as a huge opportunity to have a wide and broad platform to share these stories.
Because at the end of the day, and one of the reasons I'm so passionate about science communication, I actually just took a position at Florida International University as a director of exploration and science communications, is because scientists tend to operate in a vacuum and not communicate their science to general audiences in a way that people can relate to it and care about what they're doing and why it's important to them.
You know, why does it matter?
And I think that when you're talking about the plight of so many animals from all different parts of the world and the incredible habitats that they occupy, bringing those stories to the general forefront and having a platform like radio, TV to really reach the masses, I think it's really important because otherwise the scientific data really just languishes in files.
And with media, I feel like real action can be taken.
And if nothing less, you have inspired people to care simply by teaching them about it.
In a lot of ways, from what you say, you're blazing a trail.
Very sadly, in our world, and it's a diminishing thing, but not going away fast enough.
There are vestiges of sexism that remain.
Did you ever come across people who tried to suggest to you that the kind of stuff that you do, going out to places like Madagascar, doing those things in Africa, you know, is for big guys wearing shorts and khakis and carrying a machete to scythe their way through the jungle?
I mean, I think that, you know, women, I think it's safe to say all women would say they've experienced sexism in one way or another.
Primatology is a field that whilst it's, there's a lot of women in that field.
And a lot of that people joke that may be due to the fact that women are very patient and thorough.
And so perhaps that's why.
But what I have noticed is that on TV in particular, there aren't very many women doing what I do.
And so I think that there is this general impression that not many women are out in the field exploring and conducting field research and, you know, really putting their lives on the line to try and make a difference.
And so that was one of the other appealing things to me was that I'd like to think, or I hoped anyway, that this would inspire the future generation of scientists and explorers and that little girls could grow up seeing someone who looks like them on TV doing something that they might really want to do.
And I think that that's very important because there's actual studies that show that when you have a role model that looks like you, that sounds like you, that you really can relate to, the chances are is that you're going to want to follow in that path.
And for me growing up, and actually I think for most people, it's very difficult to name a female explorer, adventurer, scientist.
I think we all know the classic textbook names.
And this was something that was also very important to me because I think it is very important that science be well represented.
I mean, let's face it, innovative ideas come from diversity.
And so women should be in there.
And, you know, the topic, you know, leaving that aside, the topic that you're involved in is important, but a lot of people don't understand it.
And I have to say, if people, if I'd been asked to name a primatologist and a primatologist and conversate, conversationist, conservationist like yourself, I was bound to do that.
It happens all the time.
I couldn't have named one before I spoke with you a couple of months ago on the radio show and asked if you could do this.
So, you know, now I know the name of a primatologist and conservationist in this book.
So, you know, you're doing an important thing because you're making me aware and other people aware of the field and the work that you do.
You are tremendously determined.
In your biography is the story of your discovery of the mouse lemur in Madagascar, this creature that was unknown.
But not only did you do that, I was amused and amazed and very impressed to read that you were able to get the government of Madagascar to turn the habitat of that creature into a national park.
How did you do that?
Yeah, that was a really exciting time.
My colleague and I were out in the field and we discovered this new species that weighs less than two ounces and smallest primate in the world.
And I suddenly realized that this discovery, while really exciting, could also be very tragic if we didn't protect the habitat that it lived in.
It's only found in one very particular northeastern forest in Madagascar that had no protection.
And I decided to approach the prime minister and the president of Madagascar at the time.
And I took in photographs and video and showed them some maps of the area.
And they were so excited by this find and the hope that they felt it would bring to the local people that they agreed to declare this area a national park.
And suddenly this small little creature became a huge ambassador for all things wild in Madagascar and was going to help protect not only that species, but all of the other species that were under threat of extinction because the forest was just so rapidly disappearing.
How did you find that?
This is a real dumb question, probably, but how did you find this rare creature?
So we were actually out there studying the larger-bodied lemurs that we did know were there.
And there were two textbooks that talked about this one particular small primate.
And they were, one was on the east coast and one was on the west coast.
But what we found there, because we set up these Sherman mammal traps, they're called.
They're basically you bait them with a little bit of fruit and the animal runs in.
And then in the morning, you check them and then you can easily release them back into the wild.
And that's how most conservationists do like biodiversity surveys.
And so we decided, well, let's confirm, let's see what is here.
It's an area that was relatively unexplored at the time.
And so we set up these mammal traps.
And about a week into our expedition, I opened one of them up.
And this little face with huge eyes was just staring back up at me.
And we realized that we were looking at something completely different, nothing like what had been described in these textbooks.
And so that's when we collected some DNA sampling.
We released that individual back into the wild.
And then I went back on several expeditions to collect more of these individuals and more of the genetic samples so that we can indeed determine whether it was a new species, which it was.
And what do you know of the evolution of this creature?
Well, I mean, we know that it's one of our, you know, humans are primates, right?
So it's one of our old living ancestors.
And it's the most, let's say, primitive of the primates.
It belongs to the family of Prussimians.
And they play a very, lemurs play a very important role in preserving our rainforest.
Many of them are seed dispersers.
There are a lot of things that we can model when we look at hominid ancestral behavior off these animals because of the way that they live and their social group.
And they're just beautiful.
They're very unique animals.
And that was one of the things that made me fall in love with working in Madagascar is that it is, in fact, such a unique place.
You have animals that are found nowhere else on earth that look sort of like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.
And they're all very different and lively.
And, you know, kind of the things, the animated characters that we see in movies, you know, they don't even do them justice.
They're just really cool animals.
It's a great place to go.
And, you know, I think an awful lot of people in the United Kingdom and in the United States too won't even know where Madagascar is.
But it's in a unique position, is it?
It's like an island anchored off Africa.
It is.
And that's what makes it a sealed environment.
It's just an island off the west coast of Africa.
And evolution has really done an amazing job there because it has kept all of these animals very isolated.
And what a remarkable place where you have, in fact, conservationists, they argue whether it's one of the most or the top biodiversity hotspot in the world.
And it's because you have so much species endemism, you know, which means that these, the high biodiversity and only found there nowhere else on the planet.
But sadly, a lot of it is under threat of extinction because less than 10% of the original forest remains there.
You've been described as a kind of Indiana Jones.
In fact, I think you've even met Harrison Ford, who I think might be an admirer of your work.
But you've been described in that way.
And I'm sure that the terrains and the locations that you go to require you to have that adventurous spirit about you.
Have you ever been at risk in the things that you've done?
Have you ever had your life put at risk?
Probably more times than I've told my mom or care to count.
But yeah, certainly I've had a lot of close calls.
I've been charged by forest elephants and silverbacks, and those are, to me, those aren't life-threatening situations.
The ones that, you know, the venomous snakes, I've had cholera.
I mean, there's been a lot of sort of high adrenaline moments, but the real moments where I felt my life were at risk was never around wild animals.
It was actually because of humans.
You know, I work in very dangerous areas in Congo and different parts of Africa where I definitely have had some close encounters.
And I also survived a plane crash while I was in Congo and, you know, feel like I used up a couple of the nine lives I have.
Boy, I mean, what were the circumstances of that?
I mean, was this, I mean, there's nowhere in Congo that isn't, you know, somewhat remote.
So were you kind of dumped out of a plane in the middle of nowhere?
So there's no real answer to what happened to this plane other than what we could put together in the end is that the gas on the plane had been siphoned.
And so the plane never made it to the final destination.
Yeah, we had to do a pretty harsh crash landing and we just missed the forest and were able to land into an open clearing.
And then we had to wait several hours for any signs of human life to come and sort of rescue us there.
So it was a pretty remarkable experience.
And what I seem to recall sort of the most vivid memory of it all is as we were going down and we could see we were getting closer and closer to hitting the trees.
I looked around and behind me and I could see that there were a lot of nuns on the flight praying.
So were you tempted to join them and pray?
Honestly, what I went through my mind were my children.
And as people describe, you really do see your life flash before your eyes.
And I had these very clear, almost like a movie reel screen in my mind of my kids and all our memories and reading to them.
I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I'm never going to be able to tuck them in or read to them again.
And, you know, little, very simple moments that perhaps seem mundane suddenly became the most special things I could think of that I'd miss.
Well, those are the things that all of our lives are about.
We never think about them until you get into a situation like that.
I think.
Were you hurt?
I should have asked that first.
No, wasn't hurt, you know, psychologically pretty traumatized.
And I, you know, I, all I do is, is travel for a living.
But you could imagine that for the next several months, if not years, really, it was really hard for me to get on a flight.
I mean, I was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.
And every time I knew there was a flight coming up, I'd start getting, you know, rapid heart racing and just, you know, scared to get on a flight.
But I knew I had to make a decision.
There came a point where it almost paralyzed me, to be honest.
And I remember thinking, well, I either give up what I do and what I love.
And for me, it's so much more than what I do.
I feel like it's who I am.
Or I get over this and I just go forward.
And that's what I decided to do.
I just, I didn't want fear to win out.
So I just kept flying and have somehow overcome that fear of stepping on the flight.
And of course, in life, we must, I find this difficult, but I advise people to do it.
And I can't necessarily always do it myself, but I advise people to accentuate the positive.
And I'm guessing it must have occurred to you that something up there was with you, because if you're going to be in a plane crash, if you really have to be, it's better to be on a plane that's not full of fuel.
Well, that is true, too.
And especially the way that we wrecked and landed, I think that, yeah, that could have been a very different outcome.
You talked about the situations where you've been faced by elephants.
And I've been in that situation in South Africa myself too, where I took a little higher car to a place the elephants did not appreciate me being.
And then I had the problem of trying to start the higher car, which wouldn't start to turn round.
It was like a scene from a movie to get away from them.
And, you know, the truth of it is I've learned in subsequent years that they were warning me off.
But, you know, if I hadn't taken the warning and got out of there pretty sharpish, then they could have done something serious.
I think we all know that.
So this brings me to the point.
Do you believe, as I, as I've got older, have come to think, but I don't know it, that animals actually, I mean, people, I get really mad when people talk about dumb animals.
Sometimes you hear people saying, oh, yes, the place was full of dumb animals.
Animals, I don't think, are dumb at all.
Do you believe that on some level that perhaps we haven't fully researched and maybe we should, that creatures communicate with us?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that animals are incredibly intelligent.
Even the ones that people look at as mere like eating machines, like say a great white shark.
Most people just look at it as a predator that just goes for food and there's not much thinking going on.
When you really start to look at their behavior and understand how they go about their social lives and their hunting, you realize that they're quite intelligent animals.
And when you're talking about primates, which of course are our closest living relatives, you can see the animals' intelligence.
They are absolutely communicating with their eyes, with their body language, with many, in many, many different ways.
And the same is true of elephants and so many more animals, actually.
To me, there really is no such thing as a dumb animal.
All animals are adapted to their needs and to their environment.
But I think that as humans, we tend to place ourselves at the very top of, let's say, that food chain by means of intelligence.
And that's just simply not the case.
I mean, when you look at chimpanzee communities, you can see that they have not just incredibly interesting and dynamic social lives and relationships and personalities, but they also have politics and culture and war and all of these things that most people only attribute to human beings.
So I do think that we tend to undermine just how intelligent animals are and how, in fact, they are communicating with us, even though we may not always understand what it is that they're communicating.
And traditionally, you know, mankind, not all of us, but some of us have been rather arrogant towards creatures.
I read this in our Daily Mail newspaper.
Maybe you heard this story in the last couple of days, and I was going to do it on my radio show at the weekend, but I'll ask you about this.
And I'll quote the story.
As research involving transplanting lab-grown human mini-brains into animals to study neurological diseases continues to expand, experts are warning the work with these brain organoids could result in a so-called planet of the apes scenario.
This is a newspaper writing this, so I have to write it like that.
The concern is animals could develop humanized traits and start to behave in a similar way to the intelligent apes of the popular science fiction story.
The warning comes from a team at Kyoto University who released a paper highlighting a number of ethical implications that could arise with brain organoid research.
I worry about this stuff.
And by the sounds of that article, so do they.
What do you think?
I mean, I find that somewhat terrifying.
I don't know enough about that study.
And actually, as soon as we are, as soon as we're done talking, I'm going to look that up.
But that sort of thing, you know, I think that science is an incredible tool in furthering our understanding about, you know, our past and our own behavior.
But I do think that there are certain lines that it should not cross where things could get dangerous, especially when you're not even understanding what the end result might be.
So that sort of thing, I'm never a huge fan of.
And, you know, people have asked me in the past, like, are you a fan of cloning, for example?
And it's an interesting question for me because I should hope that we don't need to come to the point where we need to clone any one animal because we've eradicated it through our, you know, choices and behaviors.
Having said that, for example, during my research in Madagascar, I was collecting genetic samples of basically every animal there, but primarily the lemurs, to be kept in what I call a frozen zoo, which we could use to study a lot of things about genetics and lineage and that sort of thing.
But also the way that these samples are collected, they are in fact able to use them to clone these animals should they ever disappear.
And I look at it as an insurance policy, like you hope you never have to use it, but it's good to know you have it.
But in this case, what you're describing, I'm not sure that I'd be a big fan.
I'll have to look into it.
And there is, just before we get off the topic of news stories, there's one that it's sometimes, I'm a news guy, so it's sometimes in the nature of news, that a story will appear and it'll be in one or two outlets and then it'll disappear and then other outlets will discover it as if it's brand new.
That's happened with this story, which I think is in America today and was reported by a British newspaper four days ago.
The founder of the co-founder of Neuralink, you know, Elon Musk's project, the brain computer interface, has claimed that humans have the technology to recreate Jurassic Park.
Now, that's kind of related to what we've just been talking about.
Do you think that that's a good idea?
Again, this is something I don't love speaking off subjects that I haven't really read up on.
In general, put it this way, I believe that we probably do very much have that capability.
Like that would not surprise me at all.
The question is, should we use that capability?
And my gut feeling is no.
But again, not really knowing exactly what they're doing and how sensationalized that newspiece might be relative to what they're really doing.
It's hard for me to say.
I understand.
But I think that we tend to overreach in sort of areas of nature and things that we shouldn't meddle with.
Okay, well, let's bring you back to the main railway line of your life.
And you've been involved extensively in TV programs and research to do with Bigfoot.
Now, I asked you this question on the radio a few weeks ago, and we only had a few minutes to speak then, but I'm going to ask you it again now.
I presume that some of your mainstream scientific colleagues raised an eyebrow, shrugged their shoulders when they discovered that you were researching Bigfoot.
How's that gone down with your scientific friends?
So yeah, it's been a mixed bag, although I will say, surprisingly, more positive than not.
You know, I was worried myself about taking on this topic.
I have, you know, I've never been a Bigfoot enthusiast or a researcher.
The reason that I was asked to join this team was because of my background in finding very rare and elusive animals that people couldn't photograph and had never been studied in remote areas.
And so in a very funny way, it was like I trained for this moment my entire life because, of course, there's probably nothing more elusive if it's out there than this creature.
But I had my worries about taking something like this on because it's highly Controversial.
And I have always, you know, prided myself in having a career that focuses on animals that are real and talking about the pure science of it.
So I wanted to make sure that this topic was going to be treated seriously, with scientific integrity.
And when I was assured of that, and they wanted me to ground it in science, and they wanted me to follow the same methodology and protocol that I do in the field on any one of my other expeditions, I decided to take it on for the simple reason that, you know, what fuels science is curiosity.
And what drew me to science was in fact that insatiable curiosity that I've always had, but also the desire to help answer unanswered questions.
And this seemed like a very opportune time for that.
In addition to that, it brings you brings me anyway out into nature.
And I love exploration because even if you don't find what you're out searching for, you might find something else that you didn't even know you were looking for, should be looking for.
So there were a lot of reasons for me to feel like my decision to take it on were justified and were aligned with my values, I suppose, as a scientist.
For the naysayers, I understand that it's a very difficult thing sometimes to keep an open mind when you don't have any, in this case, physical evidence.
But I look to examples and even modern day examples.
We're making new discoveries of species all the time.
And even western lowland gorillas weren't discovered until about 140 years ago, which in the grand scheme of things isn't actually very long.
And they're a really big animal that probably should not have gone missed for that long.
So that's been, you know, that's been okay.
But the more surprising fact is that I've gotten countless emails from colleagues who are fascinated by the subject, who have always wanted to research it, who think that actually there could be something out there and who have thanked me for taking it on.
And in fact, there's a world-renowned primatologist who's a friend and a colleague of mine who I showed some of the footage that I had videotaped out there because I was a little perplexed by it.
And this is, you know, this is a guy who's seen every living primate in the world and who is not, you know, let's say a traditional like Bigfoot believer.
And he saw the footage and he was just as compelled as I was to sort of want to know more.
And I mean, I seem to recall his response was, what is that?
It looks like something is far from its home in Africa, you know, and it's upright.
And so, you know, there's some very interesting elements to all of this, and it mostly has to do with the eyewitness accounts.
That's something that I've used a lot during my own explorations, talking to the local people about, you know, stories about different animals that they've seen that may not be reported there or may not be known there anymore.
And one of the things that I've really come to appreciate is that these witnesses that, you know, there's tens and thousands of eyewitness accounts.
And you figure even if they're all false, all it takes is for one of them to be true, for this to be worth that scientific exploration.
And the other side to that is, is that a lot of these people are professionals who are police officers, military, psychologists, and they have a lot to lose, far more to lose than to gain by coming forward and sharing their experiences.
Now, I can't say that what they really saw was a Bigfoot.
I can, in most cases, tell when a person is being honest about what they think they saw.
And one of the things that always strikes me is that the consistency in the story and the description.
And when they're sharing these stories, it's almost like they're having a visceral reaction, like they're back in the moment and they're feeling it.
And you can see the fear in their eyes and you can see like the goosebumps on their skin.
And they're really reliving that moment.
So it's, I think it's a tool that explorers have always used.
And, you know, it's, to me, it really, it seems worthy of investigation because maybe we won't come up with evidence of Bigfoot, but we may discover another living creature that we didn't know existed by simply being out there searching.
I spoke recently with, I don't know if you're aware of her, Becky Cook in Idaho, who's a real grassroots researcher, right down at the grassroots level.
She told me some amazing stories.
She was effectively brought up and lived a lot of her life in close conjunction with Native American people.
And she believed that there is great congruence between the Native American people and Bigfoot.
There is, you know, there is a synergy between them because they allow for things of nature, perhaps in a way that, you know, a lot of society doesn't.
Have you come across what Becky was talking about?
Oh, I mean, absolutely.
I mean, when it comes to Bigfoot, the stories from the Native Americans to me are the most compelling of all.
And if you look at all of the accounts, you know, every tribe has a different language, and each one of those languages has a different name for this creature.
I mean, it's pretty interesting how the stories, like the languages are different, the names are different, but the stories are all so very, very similar in what their experiences are.
And what I could really, you know, personally bring to this is that I have had several encounters, say in Suriname, for example, with shaman and or the Bayaka in Africa.
I mean, these are people that live in the forest off the forest they know it like the back of their hands and you know we walk into a forest and we see trees and they walk in and they see a grocery aisle and a medicine cabinet and they are able to do and cure things that even western medicine can't and i've i've personally witnessed that so i do think that you know hearing these stories out uh are an important are
very important part of trying to solve, you know, this long-lived mystery.
So do you think that one of the reasons that for most of Western society, Bigfoot is so elusive, is that Bigfoot wants to be elusive.
Bigfoot knows that most of us who live in our cities and live these fast technological lives won't get what they're about, so they make sure that we don't see them.
I mean, I have no way to think about what, you know, to guess what a Bigfoot might be thinking, but I can say that animals have incredible ways of remaining hidden and, you know, staying out of sight when they want to be, even an animal as big as that.
I have been just like three to five feet away from an entire group of gorillas, you know, silverbacks being up to, you know, between four and 500 pounds and did not know they were there until they wanted to show themselves.
So, you know, and then you've got other animals in the animal kingdom, of course, that demonstrate incredible what we would as humans almost look at as a technology, right, of remaining hidden and changing colors and using stealth.
I mean, they have so many different ways and are so well adapted to their environment that if you are to, you know, run with the assumption that what we're dealing with is a highly intelligent creature that may be much better suited to those environments than humans are, there's no question that an animal when it wants to remain out of sight can, especially one that has been described in that way.
What's the most compelling evidence for Bigfoot that you've found or been presented with?
That's a tough one because, you know, on our, our most recent expedition uh we collected uh a sample of uh eDNA a soil sample that was underneath what my colleague referred to as a tree structure, which is reported by many witnesses that these Bigfoots make.
And in that DNA sample, which was sent to a lab in UCLA, they found chimp DNA.
And of course, we know that there are no chimps in eastern Kentucky running around in the woods.
So that was a pretty, I mean, by no means is that evidence of a Bigfoot.
But to me, that was a very mysterious, compelling piece of evidence, particularly because of the location where it was found.
And so I think the part that I struggle with the most is that, you know, videos, they can be faked, right?
The photographs, all we have are some very blurry images that really don't prove anything.
You know, we have some interesting foot casts and some renowned experts that say that there are dermal ridges on them, which of course we know is a primate-like characteristic and it has five toes and it's walking bipedally.
But all of these things, they could potentially be created.
So you can't really fake DNA.
But more importantly, I look at it that no one individual piece of evidence thus far is enough to convince me that Bigfoot exists.
However, when you start to look at all the separate pieces of evidence and trying to put what really feels like a jigsaw puzzle together, I feel that the only way that we're going to get answers is by continuing to search for those pieces of the puzzle.
And then hopefully that will lead us to the question or to the answer to that question.
Where are the best places to look?
Are they all in the U.S.?
Oh, well, there's reports, it seems, everywhere except where I'd love to go, which is Hawaii.
And in fact, I think just recently there was even a report in England, if I'm not mistaken.
Oh, I mean, I think we've had them in South Wales, in the United Kingdom.
Now, Hawaii would be a great place to go because I've only ever been to Maui and I've passed through the Big Island.
I love the Big Island, but sadly, there have been no tropical Bigfoot reports.
But hey, they've got the terrain, though.
They've got so much beautiful, deep, green, lush forest.
I think it's worth going to check.
Yeah, I mean, Kauai could be the spot, right?
Maybe no one's been looking.
But no, I mean, you know, places like Oregon, Texas, California, you know, Pacific Northwest is sort of known as the Mecca, right?
You know, Washington State.
This is where most of the sightings are coming from.
And that's one of the way in which we select where we go.
We actually have an algorithm where we look at not just how many sightings, but how recently and what type of sighting, because there's different classifications of sighting.
And that's where we pinpoint where we want to go look, because what we're able to do is most people go to a site after they hear that there's been a sighting there.
We try to estimate when that sighting may reoccur based on the information that we have of sightings there over the years.
So we're trying to sort of get there before anything else does.
Right.
So you're saying that these things, I've never heard this before, these things are cyclical.
Well, it's funny in some areas, which matches up with other known animals, there seems to be a migratory pattern according to the sightings records.
And so the idea, for example, when we went to Kentucky recently was: you know, is there a migration that really does show up here every, you know, at a certain time of year, like other animals might?
And so we're looking at the data in very different and innovative ways to see if we could use that as yet another tool in going out to these hotspots and exploring.
What would you like to find?
Would you want to be standing face to face with one?
Do you want to find, because nobody's found a body or a carcass?
Do you want to find a body or a carcass?
You know, what's the Holy Grail?
I mean, to me, I would want to see it face to face.
That would be enough to convince me.
Now, from there, like I said, we have a lot of images and videos and stuff, and that hasn't been enough.
So we'd have to get more proof than that.
But if you have a physical being in front of you, and then you know where it was standing, you're able to collect DNA evidence or other sorts of physical evidence that you could use to prove it to the scientific community.
But I think to me personally, you know, especially having discovered the world's smallest primate, this would bring me full circle, right?
So it would be a dream.
And to quote Jane Goodall, you know, I sure hope it's out there.
It would be an incredible find.
But I think personally, I would love to see one.
I would love to be able to observe it and observe its behavior and really have something concrete to, you know, to say about it.
Say you were the first person to discover.
I'm sure you've been asked this question before in different ways, but the first person to discover real evidence, maybe DNA traces that suggest that there's a real connection between Bigfoot and us.
Absolutely groundbreaking stuff, not quite, you know, men from Mars coming here, but pretty earth-shaking stuff.
How would you release that information?
That's a really good question.
And that was something that would take an awful lot of great care because unfortunately, you know, part of what drives human innovation is curiosity, but that can work for both good and evil, right?
So what you wouldn't want is some massive rush to a site where you've just discovered a species that may or may not be, you know, endangered.
So there'd have to be a lot of things thought through.
And that's something that in the wild, when you do discover a new species, you want conservation put into place, you know, conservation plans and action put into place and protection plans and all sorts of thing.
I think that with something as, you know, sort of, and I don't mean huge in the size of what we're talking about, but just huge in the way of breaking news, you'd have to be even more careful of releasing that information because you wouldn't want to put what you just discovered in any kind of danger.
But you've obviously given a lot of thought to this.
Well, I've definitely given it, you know, I don't have a plan written up or anything.
You know what I mean?
But I've definitely given it thought in that you should always be prepared.
And so that is not something that I would immediately announce and run to the press with.
I mean, I think that that would be something that, number one, I'd want to make sure to have enough evidence that was, you know, undeniable, compelling, and indisputable.
That'd be the first thing.
And that takes time.
And the second thing would be is, okay, what pieces of information do you put out and what plans are there in place to protect whatever you may be putting at risk by announcing?
And, you know, the fact is, is we take this risk all the time in conservation projects when we habituate animals, like say gorillas, for example.
We're letting, we're basically getting animals that are generally mistrusting of humans because of the negative history that they've had.
You know, Western lowland gorillas, for example, have been hunted for centuries.
And we are getting them to trust us and they can't discern between, you know, human with good intentions and human with bad intentions.
So you're opening up a real can of worms there.
So you have a duty of care.
You do.
You really, really do.
Right.
Of all of the stories that you've been told, and you told me that you've been given so many eyewitness accounts over the years.
This is a real hard one.
And there's another one you've been asked before, I'm sure.
What's the one that speaks to you most?
What is the most compelling, the most chilling one that you've ever been told?
Oh, my goodness.
That's a big question, isn't it?
Yeah.
I mean, there's been so many, but there's one that really sticks out in my mind because it was a gentleman who was a veteran.
And he reached out to me and said that he was, you know, like approaching his 70s.
He'd never shared his story before.
He'd been married for over 40 years and had never shared it even with his wife.
He had had what he thought was an encounter out in the field.
And when he brought it up to some of his higher ups, he was told never to speak about it again and that it had really terrified him that he still has sort of nightmares about it.
And he felt like a huge relief finally getting it off his chest that he'd had this very close encounter, but also that he was sort of silenced.
He was embarrassed to tell anyone.
He was afraid that people would ridicule him or they wouldn't believe him.
But he also had just felt silenced by his superiors.
So it was a, to me, it was a very compelling story because, again, he wasn't looking for notoriety.
He didn't want to be made public.
He hadn't shared it with the people he was closest to.
And he seemed really like genuinely relieved to get it off his chest.
So, was he up close and personal with one of these creatures?
Yeah, apparently he was standing just a few feet from it, you know, locking eyes and had a really very good look at all of it.
Its face, its size, everything.
Makes you wonder, doesn't it, how many other people have stories like that and are sitting on them?
And that's one of the things that the show, Expedition Bigfoot, is really about.
It really is to almost to take the stigma away, right?
Is one of the things that has come out of it.
So a lot of folks who have never shared their story before have now come to us and said that because of this show, because of the respect that the other witnesses have received from us and the great care that we've had in sharing their stories, like they feel more comfortable now in sharing theirs.
And I think that when you take the ridicule, the stigma of telling that story, I think we may be surprised by just how many more people would be willing to share theirs.
So that's one of the things that I really am proud of that has come out of the show is that so many more people are now, first of all, they feel like they've heard something that they can really relate to and that someone else was brave enough to come forward and it gives them the strength to do the same.
I know people in this world who actually go out on a limb and they'll put a date as to when they think we will receive a signal from aliens and confirm that it's not from any world that we know, you know, whether it's 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, whatever.
Do you have a date in mind when you think that it sounds to me that you've had a lot of compelling evidence for the existence of Bigfoot?
Do you have a date in your head when you think we might get confirmation that Bigfoot exists?
Well, I'd like to think that it's me, so during my lifetime.
I love that.
That is the perfect answer.
Thank you for being so generous with your time.
Oh, no.
Thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure.
Well, a couple of very, very, very quick questions to go before I let you get back to normal life.
When we're allowed to step out of prison and travel again like we used to, assuming that day comes, in the pursuance of this work, where are you going to go first?
Oh, well, okay.
So my first trip on the agenda is actually Africa.
I had a trip that was scheduled for last year, last August, and it looks like, anyway, as soon as I'm able to travel there, that's going to be the first place I go because I have a pending project that I'd like to work on.
And then depending on whether or not the investigations continue with Expedition Bigfoot, what I'd love is to return to the site where we left off because we were basically rushed out because of forest fires that were occurring in the area.
And so I'd love to go back and pick up where we left off.
What's the pending project?
You can't tell me.
I'll have to come back on your radio show to announce it.
That's another great answer.
Last question, I promise.
Did you really have dinner with Harrison Ford?
I did.
It was quite funny because, as you mentioned, the media loves to refer to me as the female Indiana Jones.
And so for almost two decades, that's what I hear.
And so I said to him when I met him, for just one night, you're going to be the male Dr. Marea Mayer.
And he had luckily a great sense of humor.
And we did, in fact, have dinner and great conversation, actually about conservation.
He's an amazing conservationist and really knowledgeable and caring about our planet.
So it was exciting.
I bet.
And he obviously follows your work.
Well, I don't know about that.
Well, he will now.
Maybe.
Thank you very much indeed.
My listener is bound to.
You've got a great website.
I told you this today.
My listener's going to want to check that out.
What is it?
It's www.mireamayer.com.
That's M-I-R-E-Y-A-M-A-Y-O-R.
Mireya, thank you so much for your time.
I hope we talk again one of these days.
And I hope that you are the person to find Bigfoot.
And when you do, please tell me.
I most certainly will.
Thank you so much.
God bless.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
What a fascinating person.
I knew she would be.
Mirea Meyer.
And hopefully she'll come back on the show sometime soon.
Your thoughts about her and all of my guests gratefully received?
Just go to the website theunexplained.tv and you can follow the link and send me an email from there.
And if you'd like to make a donation to the show while you're there, that will be gratefully received.
And if you have recently, thank you very much from the bottom of my heart.
We have more fantastic guests in the pipeline here at the home of the unexplained.
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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