UK Woman: Monkeys Raised Me in the Jungle

She says kidnappers left her in Colombian wilderness
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 22, 2012 11:46 AM CDT
UK Woman: Monkeys Raised Me in the Jungle
A capuchin monkey, apparently similar to the adoptive parents of Marina Chapman.   (Shutterstock)

At age 5, she was kidnapped for ransom and left in the Colombian jungle—but she was lucky enough to be adopted by a clan of monkeys. So says Marina Chapman, who eventually married a Brit and now lives in Britain, the Daily Mail reports. She lived with capuchin monkeys for five years, learning to catch her dinner with her bare hands, her daughter tells London's Sunday Times. The two are now writing a book about it. According to a PR blurb, via the Australian, "Marina developed extraordinary super-human abilities such as tree-climbing, stealth, and animal communication."

Eventually, hunters found the girl, selling her off to a brothel where she suffered beatings before escaping. This time, a human family took her in. On a visit to Britain, she met her now-husband. She didn't tell him about her simian brethren until after they got married. Says her daughter: "When we wanted food, we had to make noises for it. All my school friends loved Mum, as she was so unusual. She was childlike." Chapman's daughters "got bedtime stories about the jungle ... We didn't think it odd—it was just Mum telling her life." (More Colombia stories.)

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