A Feral Child

In 1967, Disney released the animated film The Jungle Book. The film follows Mowgli, a young human boy raised by a pack of wolves in the Indian jungle. A seemingly far-fetched thing, that. But something only a decade before that, a real-life adventure much like this occurred in the Colombian jungle. Not with wolves, but with monkeys and a small girl who now goes by the name Marina Chapman.

Marina Chapman says she was abducted from her home in Colombia at age four and abandoned in the jungle. She awoke to find herself surrounded by nature. She remembered: "I realized it's a forest and then I realized an animal... one monkey came, and then some more followed him, and they came closer to me and they were staring at me. I was quite upset and one of them came and start to pop my ears and they start to touch me."

The black-and-white capuchin primates eventually lost interest but continued to return to check on her. They didn't immediately welcome her, but gradually began climbing onto her shoulders and playing with her hair. Eventually, they accepted her as part of the troop.

She somehow survived for several years in the company of capuchin monkeys, learning to communicate with them through whistles and screeches and scavenging food they left behind. She came to regard the monkeys as family. Once, when she became ill after eating the wrong seeds, an older monkey dragged her into a pool of water, where she drank until she began to feel better.

One day, Marina found a piece of mirror and saw her reflection for the first time. She was shocked, having come to think of herself as one of the monkeys.

Some years after living with the monkeys, a group of hunters found Marina. She was transported to Cucuta, Colombia, where she was taken to a brothel, but she managed to escape. She lived on the streets until a couple in England took her in and raised her. Learning to function among people was difficult, and learning to trust them was harder still.

Marina went on to marry, raise two daughters, and become a grandmother. Remarkably, she says her greatest regret was leaving the jungle for what turned out to be an often brutal civilization.

Marina Today

—Mitchell Hegman