Woman raised by monkeys was forced to learn how to communicate with them before being rescued

The story of Marina Chapman can only be described as one in a million.

Speaking to LADbible, the woman from Colombia opened up about how she was raised by monkeys and was forced to learn how to communicate with them before being rescued. Check out her incredible story:

It started when she was just four years old after she was abducted from her home village in a rural area of the country.

Sadly, Marina doesn't remember much about her parents. What she does remember is being captured by two men and driven away from her home.

Before she knew what was going on, they dumped her in the jungle and she was completely alone.

"When I saw them going, I just didn't want them to leave," she says. "I was worried about it.

"I saw their legs, one was a black one and one was a white man moving away in shorts.

LADbible

"And I just wanted to beg them to come back for me, not to leave me there."

But no one came back for her, and Marina was left to fend for herself. That was until she heard a monkey screeching in the trees above.

"The one that came first, he's staring at me," she recalls.

"And he keeps testing with the finger, a really quite strong little monkey, he kept poking me. And I just didn't want to move. I just didn't want to do anything.

"Until some more came, and I felt a bit better. It was just a nice feeling about seeing something in that moment, I just forgot to cry, and I still was frightened about it."

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Marina says that as the weeks passed, she began to grow closer to the monkeys, who eventually accepted her as part of their group.

And as she became more familiar with the monkeys and how they lived and communicated, she says she began to understand how to speak with them.

Discussing how she was able to find foods and eat, Marina said: "I had to learn to recognise the sounds.

"The screechy one, you have to really be careful, you have to hide away.

"Many sounds mean something. The 'danger' one is the louder one, and then the whistle one is the 'food' one.

"And each sound means different things, but it took me a while to get used to it, I just learned from watching what they were doing every time I heard the sound."

You can watch the full Minutes With interview here.

Topics: Animals, Weird

Dominic Smithers

Dominic Smithers is LADbible's Editorial Lead. After graduating from the University of Leeds with a degree in French and History, he went on to write for the Manchester Evening News, the Accrington Observer and the Macclesfield Express. So as you can imagine, he’s spent many a night wondering just how useful that second language has been. But c'est la vie.

@SmithersDom