Tippi Degré, a real character from The Jungle Book?
Tippi Degré is a 24-year-old French girl who didn’t have the same childhood as you. No, she didn’t have video games, TV, computers or dolls. No, she didn’t have friends named Thomas, Pierre, Marie or Alexandra. Nor did she have a difficult childhood or absent parents. In fact, her childhood was the coolest of all: she grew up until the age of 10 riding on the back of a five-ton elephant she called « brother », playing with a cheetah or hugging a giant toad as if it were a stuffed toy. Tippi’s childhood seems more like a recent version of Mowgli, rather than something real.
Born in Namibia to photographers Alain Degré and Sylvie Robert, Tippi grew up in Africa. Tippi spent her entire childhood playing with wild animals such as lion cubs, a mongoose, a snake, a cheetah, a baby zebra, giraffes and crocodiles. The little girl saw nothing unusual in this:
I don’t have any friends here. That’s because I never see children. So animals are my friends.
Tippi’s childhood was made possible by her parents’ work as photographers. Her mother, Sylvie, says: « It’s wonderful to have been able to instill that in this child. She was a very lucky girl because she was born and raised in the wilderness until the age of 10. She spent more time with animals than with humans. She really thought they were all her friends. She tried to live on their terms. »
Her parents published a book entitled Tippi – Mon Livre D’afrique in which they published her photos.
What’s most astonishing about what you see here is young Tippi’s behavior. It’s this carefree attitude and boundless energy that enables her to come into contact with the most dangerous yet inaccessible animals of the African wilderness. According to her parents, the animals have never shown any signs of violence, and the ostrich even avoids running as if it were afraid of the child falling off its back.
Tippi had to give up this dream life when her parents decided to move back to France when she was 10. So she went to school every day. As you can imagine, the city is not her element. Tippi wasn’t at ease with civilized life and found nothing in common with what she was used to seeing and doing. After two years, her parents decided to home-school her. Now aged 24, Tippi Degré studied cinema at the Sorbonne and has even worked with the Fort Boyard tigers. She remains discreet about her private life, but rumors have it that she has obtained a Namibian passport because she has always felt African at heart, thus giving a modern-day sequel to the « Jungle Book ».
Here are some photos of Tippi with her animal friends, and in a tribe :
Here’s an hour-long documentary on the fascinating childhood of today’s Mowgli:
What do you think of Tippi Degré, the girl who could have inspired The Jungle Book?
Source : Oddity Central