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The youngest was actually an 11-months old baby that spent their first birthday in the jungle. On one hand I am surprised that they managed to take care of the

by sph 3y ago

The youngest was actually an 11-months old baby that spent their first birthday in the jungle. On one hand I am surprised that they managed to take care of the baby for that long, on the other hand this is a comment from a Western man weakened by modern society while those are indigenous kids, with a keener instinct and knowledge of nature than we give them credit for. Put on a remote island, any of these kids will probably survive longer than a fully grown man like me. That said, I'm happy to know they have been found and can be returned to their families; reading their story made my day brighter. There is always so much doom and gloom on the news these days. Here's a longer article with more detail and pictures from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/10/colombian-children-found-alive-five-weeks-after-amazon-jungle-plane-crash https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/10/colombian-chil...

arp242 3y ago
If the weather isn't too harsh and there's enough water and fruit or plants around then it's actually less hard to survive than you might think (the tricky bit is knowing what is edible, but you've got about 2 weeks to experiment). In the right conditions it's easier to survive than many assume. To be honest with statements like "their survival is a sign of a knowledge and relationship with the natural environment of life, which is learned from the mother’s womb and practiced from a very early age" I think there's a lot of "native fetishism" and woo-woo thinking going on here. In this case the kids apparently also ate food drops, and were malnourished when found. I don't want to come of as too cynical or dismissive, because of course it's an amazing story! The real miracle is that they survived the plane crash at all, and the survival is more "amazing story" than "amazing miracle".
Jeff_Brown 3y ago
A Colombian woman I know said her mother, who lived in the Amazon for a few years, had to learn what an anaconda smelled like, to avoid it. Because imagine trying to run away from something in the jungle.

by sph 3y ago

arp242 3y ago

If the weather isn't too harsh and there's enough water and fruit or plants around then it's actually less hard to survive than you might think (the tricky bit is knowing what is edible, but you've got about 2 weeks to experiment). In the right conditions it's easier to survive than many assume. To be honest with statements like "their survival is a sign of a knowledge and relationship with the natural environment of life, which is learned from the mother’s womb and practiced from a very early age" I think there's a lot of "native fetishism" and woo-woo thinking going on here. In this case the kids apparently also ate food drops, and were malnourished when found. I don't want to come of as too cynical or dismissive, because of course it's an amazing story! The real miracle is that they survived the plane crash at all, and the survival is more "amazing story" than "amazing miracle".

Jeff_Brown 3y ago

A Colombian woman I know said her mother, who lived in the Amazon for a few years, had to learn what an anaconda smelled like, to avoid it. Because imagine trying to run away from something in the jungle.