(NewsNation) — Four children were rescued from the Amazon rainforest in Colombia after living alone for 40 days when a plane they were on crashed.
How could they have possibly survived in an environment where dangerous predators live?
Les Stroud, a survivalist who hosted the Canadian-produced show “Survivorman,” says the fact the children were indigenous to the region likely played a key role.
“If you think about it, we know how to survive where we were raised, whether that be the city or the country or suburbia. They were raised in the jungle, and I know that when you have that inherent instruction and teaching … they would know how to hide, where to sleep, what they can eat,” Stroud said Monday on “CUOMO.” “They weren’t in somewhere new. It wasn’t a hiking trip gone wrong. They were essentially in an area that they’ve been living in their entire life.”
The children are members of the Huitoto Indigenous group of southeastern Colombia. They relied on their jungle and survival skills they learned early in their childhood to stay alive for 40 days in the Amazon jungle all alone.
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro says the children’s mother and two pilots died in a plane crash May 1 due to engine failure after issuing a mayday alert. The plane fell off the radar, prompting an intensive search for the children, whose ages range from 11 months to 13 years old.
The missing children became the sole focus of a massive rescue operation. Colombia’s army sent 150 soldiers to search for the missing children and to work with locals in the area.
Authorities, and Stroud, believe the children’s key to survival was cassava flour and their knowledge of the rainforest’s fruit for food. The children also hid in tree trunks to protect themselves from snakes and other dangerous animals in the area.
“It seems to me that the 13-year-old knew enough to say, ‘All right, let’s take supplies with us,'” Stroud said. “Mom passed away four days after the crash while they were there, and then they knew enough to gather some food and to carry on that way.”
The children were found three miles away from the crash site.
“Three miles through the jungle is not like three miles walking through New York City. That’s an insane and intense distance in the jungle. That can take a very long time,” Stroud said.
Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest children, thanked God for the miracle in the jungle.
“This is a miracle from God. As beliefs of Indigenous people, for us, this is a test God is giving me, how much faith I have in him. And I have said it with my own words, as I said it initially, we as Indigenous people are able to search, demonstrating to the world that we found the plane, demonstrating to the world that we found the children,” Ranoque told The Associated Press.
The children are now recovering at a hospital in Bogota. According to officials, they will be there for at least two weeks.
The two oldest are 9 and 13 years old. Having each other, Stroud said, was likely another reason the group was able to stay alive.
“The 13- and the 9-year-old have skills — two people for gathering, two people for communication, giving each other confidence and thinking things through,” Stroud said. “It is far more powerful and much easier to survive with somebody than to survive alone.”
NewsNation correspondent Jorge Ventura contributed to this report.