MANAUS, Brazil, March 19, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Two Brazilian Indigenous boys
aged seven and nine have been found after surviving 25 days lost in the
Amazon rainforest, where they ate fruit and drank rainwater to stay alive,
officials said Friday.

  Brothers Glauco, 7, and Gleison, 9, were found Tuesday 35 kilometers (22
miles) from the spot where they went missing, famished and dehydrated but
otherwise fine.

  "They are suffering from malnutrition and severe dehydration, but they are
gaining weight, with no risk to their lives," Januario Carneiro da Cunha
Neto, an indigenous health official in the northern city of Manaus, told AFP.

  The boys, members of the Indigenous Mura group, went missing on February
18, when they left their village in the rural county of Manicore in Amazonas
state and entered the dense rainforest to hunt for birds.

  "They survived on rainwater, lake water and sorva," a local fruit rich in
carbohydrates and fats, Carneiro said.

  The authorities had given up the search for the boys. But local Indigenous
residents kept looking for them, until one day a family friend who was out
gathering wood found them by chance, Carneiro said.

  He said the older boy had carried the younger one on his back when he grew
too weak to walk.

  The boys were taken Thursday to a hospital in Manaus and were being treated
for some cuts and infections, but fortunately avoided any run-ins with snakes
or other wildlife, he said.