Wild life of woman raised by monkeys who didn't speak and walked on all fours

02 January 2024 , 19:00

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Walking on all fours and foraging for nuts and berries was how Marina Chapman survived rural jungle life for five years - without any human contact.

The 73-year-old housewife was just four when she was trafficked by a gang and abandoned in the Colombian rainforest, where she claims she was raised by monkeys like Tarzan. White-faced capuchins became her family and friends until she was found by hunters in 1960 and eventually moved to live in the UK.

Marina, now in her seventies, told her own story in her 2013 book, The Girl With No Name. She claimed she was snatched in 1954 when child-trafficking gangs were commonplace in Colombia. "I saw a hand cover my mouth - a black hand in a white hanky," Marina previously said. "Then I realised there were two people taking me away."

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Marina lived in the jungles of Colombia and copied how the monkeys lived to survive

Wild life of woman raised by monkeys who didn't speak and walked on all fours

Her youngest daughter Vanessa now lives in a rural mountain range in Colombia

For reasons that are unclear, she was later dumped in the rainforest. After around two days, she says she saw a troop of capuchins and began copying them to survive. She would watch which nuts and berries they ate, catch bananas they dropped, and drink from their watering holes. Eventually - as she began to walk on all fours and stopped talking - the monkeys began to accept her.

"One day one of the younger ones landed on my shoulders and, if you've never been hugged and this animal puts their hands on your face, I tell you it's the nicest touch," she said. Marina was there for around five years until she was found by hunters. "One day, the regular cacophony was pierced by an immediate danger call from one of the monkeys," she wrote in her book. "The [hunters'] nets, I realised as I watched, were for catching and stealing whatever creatures they fancied."

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She claims the hunters took her to a brothel in Cucuta and that she later became a street child before eventually finding employment as a maid. By her late teens, she was working in the capital city, Bogota, and accompanied the family she was working for on a life-changing trip to the UK. It was in Bradford that Marina fell in love and had two daughters, Joanna and Vanessa.

When Marina's book was later published, it was met with scepticism. Some suggested she was a fantasist, others that her brain was making false memories due to childhood trauma. But her youngest daughter Vanessa is confident it's all true. She told The Mirror: "They found Mum has strange jungle diseases lying dormant in her blood that she couldn't possibly have if her story wasn't true."

Capuchin monkeys began to accept Marina as she stopped talking and started walking on all fours (Getty Images/LatinContent RF)

Vanessa, who appears in the new series of Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild on Channel 5 tonight, has always loved the outdoors - but it wasn't until the global pandemic forced her to stay on holiday in Colombia that she discovered the jungle was always meant to be her home too.

The 40-year-old told The Mirror: "I always decorated my room at home with images of nature and mountains. My cousin would laugh at me and say I wanted to run off in the jungle. And now she's like, 'Oh my God, you actually did'." Vanessa now lives in a remote lodge in Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and finally feels as though she belongs.

Unlike Marina once did, Vanessa doesn't have to forage for nuts, and she even has Wi-Fi. She grows crops and eats bananas, passionfruit and guava for breakfast. "It really is the best of both worlds," she added.

"This is the first time I've felt a feeling of home and belonging," she explained. "And the monkeys do come around. They howl a lot in the trees. They are really loud. I've also got a big cat somewhere. Joanna came out more like Dad. She works as a civil servant, married with three kids living in Leeds. I was like Mum - born with jungle feet and twigs in my hair."