British grandmother, Marina Chapman, claims to have been raised by capuchin monkeys
Marina Chapman’s new book, The Girl with No Name, claims that the British woman was raised by monkeys in the Colombian jungle for about five years of her childhood, adopting their behavior and eating the same food.
Chapman claims that a group of capuchin monkeys became her surrogate family after she was kidnapped and abandoned in a Colombian jungle when she was 4 years old.
She says she survived by eating the monkeys’ discarded fruit and nuts, eventually forgetting her parents and even her own name. She also learned how to climb high in the trees, which she can still do today in her mid-60s.
“I learned from them,’’ she told Michelle Kosinski on TODAY Tuesday. “They became my family.’’
After about five years living with the monkeys, Chapman was found by hunters and sold to a brothel, according to the report. In her teens, she became a maid, and in her mid-twenties, on a trip to Britain, she met and married her husband, John. The two had children together.
“When we wanted food, we’d have to make noises for it,” her daughter told the newspaper. “All my schoolfriends loved Mum as she was so unusual. She was childlike, too, in many ways.”
Chapman shares her story in the new book “The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of the Girl Raised by Monkeys,” which is set to be published in 2013, according to The Bookseller.
