A two-year-old boy from a small Indian village has surprised quite a few by making friends with wild langur monkeys. The primates play with him, share food with him and even wake him up at 6 am sharp every day.
Samarth Bangari, the boy in question, belongs to a village named Allapur in Bidar district of India's southern state of Karnataka.
His parents, are not only comfortable to keep him in the company of the monkeys for hours but also said that villagers believe Samarth is the reincarnation of the Hindu monkey-God Hanuman.
"He plays with them, feeds them home cooked food. The monkeys love him and even when he pulls their tails, the animals do not harm him," said his mother Nanda Bangari, according to The Mirror.
These monkeys are said to wait patiently daily for Samarth to return from school. They never attack the little boy even if he pulls their tails.
Samarth is still learning to speak but mimics monkey noises.
Eventually, Samrath has drawn comparisons to Mowgli – the fictional feral child, who is the protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book stories.
According to his parents, the unusual friendship began when a monkey snatched food from Samarth's hand when he was just six months old, reported the website.
"They all gathered in large numbers seeing him eating and one came close to him suddenly and snatched his food...Surprisingly Samarth did not cry instead he started gesturing at the monkeys," said the little boy's father Sunil Bangari, as reported.
This is not the only incident of animals bonding with children. A Ukrainian girl, who was left to live with dogs in a kennel by her abusive parents from the ages of 3 to 8, has become more like the canines. When she was found in 1991, she used to only bark and not talk and run around on four limbs.
