You want Jane? You got Jane.

OK, she wasn’t exactly swinging from vine to vine, but this is about as close as you’re going to get in 2017.

It was police in northern India who found the girl, who had apparently been living with the primates for a ‘number of years’.

The Telegraph below:

Doctors at a hospital in Bahraich, south-east of New Delhi, said the girl was gradually shedding her animal-like traits and “becoming human” after she was found by police eight weeks ago and brought in for treatment.

She is unable to communicate except through irritable, unintelligible muttering, said Dr Arun Lal, the district chief medical officer who visited her on Thursday.

Believed to be around 8 to 10 years old, she walked on all fours for the first few weeks in hospital, but now she is standing on two legs and walking around normally, Dr Lal said.

If she knew what was going on in the world around her, she might want to head back to the jungle.

Initially, he said, she was “highly aggressive”, shunned human contact and was constantly trying to flee the hospital and had to be kept in close confinement.

Recently she started responding to humans around her and occasionally even held hands with some of the doctors and nurses attending on her.

The girl had been “horribly week” and malnourished after she being rescued by police in late January from a troop of monkeys in Katarniaghat Wildlife sanctuary in Bahraich district near the Ganges River, her body covered with wounds and sores.

If you’re doubting her street cred, this photo below is from the aforementioned sanctuary:

Doctors report that she is now eating a healthy diet and is far healthier, with a radiological test to determine her age soon to be carried out.

Dr Lal dismissed any similarities between the girl and Mowgli (spoil sport), and it’s true that she shows signs of having had human contact before:

“The fact that she is responding to humans shows that she has some memory of living with them,” Mr Lal said.

The girl, whom doctors have named her Durga, after the Hindu warrior goddess of destruction, was rescued after being spotted in the company of three moneys by a police posse on a routine patrol in the wildlife sanctuary.

When one of the policemen approached them, the girl and monkeys screeched and tried running away.

But he chased them and successfully corralled her and deposited her in hospital.

I suppose only time will tell if he did her a disservice. As they say, you only need the ‘bare necessities’ to get by in this world.

[source:telegraph]