Field trips during his time at the University of Kansas with Dr. Clarence McClung and Dr. Roy Moody helped prepare Taylor for his future endeavors.
[1] Upon completing his bachelor's degree, Taylor went to the Philippines, where at first he held a teacher's post in a village in central Mindanao, in the Industrial School for Manobo now known as the Agusan del Sur State College of Agriculture and Technology (ASSCAT).
In the following years, his explorations took him to Costa Rica, Sri Lanka and Thailand, and he published extensively on all these countries.
After World War I, he was sent to Siberia to follow the Russian Revolution under the cover of a Red Cross mission to stop a typhus epidemic.
During World War II, the OSS employed Taylor to teach jungle survival in British Ceylon.