The Indigenous knowledge of a 13 year-old girl from the Amazonian village of Araracuara helped her and her three younger siblings survive in the jungle for 40 days after a plane crash.
Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy and her three siblings, Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, aged nine; four-year-old Tien Noriel Ronoque Mucutuy; and Cristin Neriman Ranoque Mucutuy, 11 months, were on board a plane with their mother and two other adults flying from Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane crashed on the morning of 1 May.
The four Huitoto children ate fruit from the jungle and cassava flour stored on the plane to survive for 40 days until they were found earlier this month by Colombian soldiers and Indigenous volunteers.
Henry Guerrero, an Indigenous man involved in the search, told local media the children were found with two bags containing clothes, a towel, a flashlight, two mobile phones, a music box, and a soda bottle which they used to collect water in the jungle.
"They wanted to eat rice pudding, they wanted to eat bread," he said.
Manuel Ranoque, the father of the two youngest children, told media in Colombia that Lesly said their mother died days after the crash.
The pilot of the single-engine Cessna in which they were flying declared an emergency due to engine failure because the plane vanished from radar.
On 10 June Colombian Defence Minister Iván Velásquez said the children were being rehydrated and could not eat solid food yet.
Later, their uncle Fidencio Valencia, told Noticias Caracol the exhausted children were starting to talk about the experience and one of them said they hid in tree trunks to protect themselves in a jungle area filled with snakes, mosquitoes and other animals.
"They at least are already eating, a little, but they are eating," he said after visiting them at the military hospital in Bogota.
"When the plane crashed, they took out (of the wreckage) a farina (Cassava flour), and with that, they survived. After the fariña ran out, they began to eat seeds," he said.
Wire services report that Astrid Cáceres, head of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare, said the children were also able to eat fruit because "the jungle was in harvest".
Officials praised Lesly's courage and said she had knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest and led the children through the ordeal.
Damaris Mucutuy, an aunt of the children, told a local radio station "the children are fine", despite being dehydrated and suffering insect bites.
General Pedro Sanchez, who was in charge of coordinating rescue efforts, said the children were found five kilometres from the crash site in a small forest clearing.
