Perhaps out in the jungle of Madagascar, there would be nobody to judge her except for the lemurs. Unfortunately, this attitude existed even in the field both among researchers and among TV crews:

Mireya is the kind of role model for me and for women & girls across the world. She is not your stereotypical explorer and she's not ashamed that she loves "girlie" things. She's always loved animals and dreamed of exploring in the jungle one day. She becomes an NFL cheerleader (which will always be brought up in regards to her career) and later goes on to get an anthropology degree, explore across the world, become a National Geographic host, and to earn her Ph.D. And then there's the fact that the narrative itself is very choppy. Here's the near-death frayed rope experience as an example:I was thrilled to receive a signed copy of this memoir by the author. The following is my honest review after reading the book. Time for another fun fact: It was only in the 1950s that professional sports team began employing cheerleader squads and Baltimore Colts was the first NFL team to have a cheerleading team. A Cheer Pyramid Gone Wrong Getting through this novel was tedious at times simply due to how annoying the author was, but her explorations and adventures somewhat speak for themselves. Mireya Mayor is a primatologist, an explorer and the first female wildlife correspondent for the Ultimate Explorer series on National Geographic Channel.

Mayor says it looked similar to known species of mouse lemur, but there was something different about the one she caught.I started noticing that my hands were swelling," she says. "And then spontaneous wounds started appearing and red streaks started going up my leg."

She went on her first expedition, funded by National Geographic, shortly after that, and started graduate school in anthropology. Since then, she's been nominated for Emmy Awards (twice), become a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, starred in two TV shows ("Wild Nights with Mireya Mayor," and History Channel’s "Expedition Africa: Stanley & Livingstone"), and become a Fulbright Scholar and a National Science Foundation Fellow. Along the way, she's conducted and published a ton of peer-reviewed research, and discovered and formally described the smallest primate species currently known, the mouse lemur Microcebus mittermeieri. As a result of her credentials and her enthusiasm, there's a pretty good (and important) story in this book. This, I suspect, is why Jane Goodall wrote the forward. The writing was therefore better than expected, though not great. It's conversational, but so much is left out! As other Goodreads reviewers have noted, she starts a story, gets to the climax, and then ends it. The example someone else has given of hanging off a mountainside and noticing that her rope was fraying, and then suddenly she's at the top of the mountain, is typical. In the cheerleading world exists a rule: if you throw someone in the air, make sure to catch them. When you look at this picture, you realize three of the four girls followed the rule and did their part but the fourth cheerleader probably lost her focus. This picture tells us what happens when cheerleaders lose their focus and things go wrong. We told you, cheerleading isn’t as easy as it looks. What a Crappy Day Of course, books like Bonobo Handshake and Pink Boots and a Machete aren't really like The Jungle Book at all, and that's a good thing. Not only do they contain a strong narrative and interesting characters, but science is central in these books (sometimes, science is even a character itself, in some ways).

OOPS!

It was just this beautiful, natural, green abyss of impenetrable forest," she says. "Monkeys jumping everywhere and macaws flying overhead, and we would park this canoe at night on the side of the riverbank, climb out and basically machete our way in." Here's an excerpt from one: "the show can't decide whether to treat Mayor as an expert, or as the title and location hint, a bit of a sex symbol." He then added, "But throughout the show she wears a wool cap and drab clothes that just beg us to take her seriously." This was in contrast to the observation of another critic, who wrote, "Explorers require rugged gear, the sort Indiana Jones girds himself in. Then there's Mireya Mayor, a sexy blond explorer. She fills out a tank top nicely." I can't win. If I wear tank tops, I'm vying for attention. If I cover up, it's only because I want to be taken seriously. Regardless, the first critic lost all credibility when he called my clothes drab. They were both hip and designer. We just can’t take our eyes off this beautiful cheerleader’s abs — we can’t even imagine having abs as great as hers. While this lady here has certainly worked her on her body, she hasn’t given much thought to her cheerleading face. This one closed eye and tongue out face is certainly not working in her favour. The One with Too Much Teeth

Dr. Taylor then asked me about my "other" life as a cheerleader, which had obviously intrigued or puzzled her for some time. As it turned out, Doc, as she soon let me call her, was a huge Dolphins fan. Despite her stern exterior, we shared another couple of interests: shopping and shoes.One of her most memorable trips was to Madagascar, where she and a colleague were studying lemurs. They set small mammal traps in the jungle to study the other wildlife in the area.