REARED BY BABOONS.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18168, 5 November 1930, Page 11

REARED BY BABOONS.

“TARZAN” OF REAL LIFE. S » RAW FOOD DIET. RESCUED FROM THE BUSH. A story of a native "Tarzan of the Apes,” who as a child was seized by baboons while his mother was hoeing mealie and was reared by them until he was rescued from the bush when he was 14, is told by the Port Alfred correspondent of a Bloemfontein newspaper, says a South African paper. The correspondent states that the man, now 30 years old, has the habits of a baboon and eats raw food. His body is scarred all over through jumping baboon-like in the bush. He was seized when asleep as a child, and years later, as a boy, was discovered with a troop of baboons by a farmer. When he was taken to market he attracted so much attention from other natives on account of his long arms and curious shape that the farmer was obliged to dispense with his services. When leading oxen he would habitually jump on the yoke and sit there monkey-wise. ONCE A MAN. RESCUED AND FED BY MONKEYS. The above story recalls an account which Colonel Cyril Foley, who has lived in South Africa for a considerable time, related of a man who lived with baboons in that country. Colonel Foley states that in 1895 he was about to lunch with the late Colonel Frank Rhodes at Buluwayo when his host said he had seen, “something which had taken away his* appetite." A little while before on that day, Colonel Rhodes had passed the Zeederberg’s mail coach, which had come from the south. When the coach stopped, out of it stepped a man who was nothing more or less than a man monkey. The object was wrapped in a mackintosh sheet, was bent doubled with matted hair all over the face; the finger-nails were of abnormal length, and the man was chattering like a baboon. Further Investigation by Colonel Rhodes’ elicited the story from the. two men that they had been prospecting at Elephant’s Pits, in the Sinambula Forest, when they noted a strange-looking baboon in' the company of a herd of those monkeys. It seemed to move more slowly than the rest of the party, which enabled them to get near it Realising that it had undoubtedly been once a man, they captured it and brought it to Buluwayo. Mind a Blank. It seems that the man was a former prospector and became lost some years before in the forest. He lay down to die, but baboons rescued and fed him. In the long interval he had lost the power of speech and his mind had become a blank. He stayed with the baboons and gradually acquired their habits and also their methods of making each other understand. A case of a “tiger-child” came from India only a few weeks ago. When a party of Koles were beating a jungle they came across a tigress with two cubs and a peculiar “object” which they suspected to be a human being. A capture discovered that the “object" was a child which had been adopted by the tigress. The child, who was 5 or 6 years old, when captured at first was very ferocious. Although a certain amount of discipline was imparted afterwards, the ferocious nature never left him, and he' never showed any fear of tigers. At first the chlid made the grunts of the tiger.