‘Female Indiana Jones’ to launch 2019 National Geographic Live speaker series at Barclay

When a 400-pound gorilla charges, the best line of defense is to crouch and eat leaves.

Odds are you will never need that bit of information.

But in Mireya Mayor’s line of work, it certainly applies.

“You engage in feeding behavior because that makes you non-threatening,” Mayor said, describing encounters with agitated apes. “Nobody starts a fight when they are eating. They figure if you are eating, then you aren’t out to get them.”

Mayor is a primatologist, explorer and Emmy Award-nominated wildlife correspondent for National Geographic. Trekking through treacherous terrains, discovering new species and being charged by those gorillas — as well as other beasts — has earned her the nickname the “female Indiana Jones.”

As part of a National Geographic lecture series, which is now on sale, Mayor plans to speak Jan. 13 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Mayor’s origin story is unusual in her field.

While studying prelaw at the University of Miami, the daughter of Cuban immigrants worked as a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins. To fulfill a school requirement, she enrolled in an anthropology course.

“We learned about primates, how little we knew about some, and their endangerment,” said Mayor, now 44. “It changed everything for me.”

The eureka moment came when Mayor rented 1989’s “Gorillas in the Mist,” the Sigourney Weaver film recounting famed naturalist Dian Fossey’s work with mountain gorillas in Rwanda.

“I realized that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she said.

Mayor earned bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and philosophy at Miami. She became a Fulbright Scholar, completing a doctorate in anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York.

She’s since traveled the world, studying animals in Africa, South America and Madagascar — her “home away from home.” She began regular visits to Africa in 2001 and in 2003 co-discovered a previously unknown mouse lemur species.

Mayor is constantly reminded of the inherent danger of working with wild animals. She is regularly charged by gorillas. Though the primates are known to “bluff,” there were a few times when she had to break protocol and run.

“There is no guarantee when you are working with a wild animal of the outcome,” Mayor said. “You can’t predict what they are going to do. I just always listen to my gut. We are animals at the end of the day and have instincts that you need to listen to.”

On one particular day, a silverback leaped at Mayor. She dodged it, narrowly escaping. Later that day, while heading back to camp, she climbed a tree to evade a charging elephant.

“I felt like the Congo was giving me a message: ‘It’s time to go back to your tent for the day,’” Mayor recalled.

For the explorer, curiosity conquers fear and apprehension.

Mayor isn’t fearless. In particular, she hates heights. But when she was tasked with joining an expedition that would summit a table-top mountain in South America, a source of inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World,” her thirst for discovery overcame that fear.

The team discovered several frog species and collected new plants for analysis.

“I had never climbed before and was terrified of heights,” Mayor said. “But the reason I wanted to do it — I love the idea of exploring places that we know nothing about. It was the most treacherous and rewarding experience I ever had.”

Whatever inner mechanism fuels the need to discover, Mayor believes it is a trait bound to the character of a person, one that may be uniform among all of history’s great explorers — David Livingstone, Robert Burke and John Speke, among others. Though separated by more than a century, Mayor feels communion with these men when reading their words.

“Being an explorer is not something you do, it is who you are,” Mayor said. “When I read through the journals of other explorers, it is like reading my own journal. I instantly connect to their words.”

Mayor sees a similar drive in one of her daughters, Ava Wolff.

During a recent expedition to Madagascar, the 10-year-old showed an affinity for the wild. Ava said that she felt she had “come home,” a sentiment her mother exclaimed two decades prior when she first arrived on the island.

With six kids, five of them girls, Mayor is hoping her story can inspire.

“It makes a huge difference when a girl sees someone who they can personally relate to doing something they thought they could never do,” Mayor, who lives with her family in Great Falls, Va., said. “I hope that my story is ... inspiration for girls and women.”

In a few weeks, Mayor will meet the other Indiana Jones.

Harrison Ford will present a conservation award to Russell Mittermeier, a formative colleague of Mayor’s, in — where else? — Indianapolis.

“I’ll finally get a picture with the real Indiana Jones,” Mayor quipped, “but I am going to tell him that I am the real Indiana Jones. He’s the male Mireya Mayor.”

If You Go

What: National Geographic Live

Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine

When: Mireya Mayor at 4 p.m. Jan. 13; Hilaree Nelson at 4 p.m. March 3; Brian Skerry at 4 p.m. April 14

Information: Nelson was the first woman to climb Mount Everest and the neighboring peak Lhotse in 24 hours. She will speak about leading a team of elite mountain climbers up a treacherous peak in Myanmar. Skerry is a wildlife photographer who specializes in oceanic life.

Tickets: Single or package deals can be purchased at https://bit.ly/2OcL1R2

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter:@benbrazilpilot