DHARWAD, India: He is still too young to talk, but a two-year-old Indian boy has become a modern-day Mowgli and a subject of local intrigue after befriending a gang of langur monkeys, reports AFP.

Samarth Bangari’s unusual friendship was discovered when the youngster was spotted alone in his village in southern India playing with nearly two dozen grey langurs.

The infant’s uncle Barama Reddy said it was “strange” for the monkeys to behave like that, and villagers feared the boy would be attacked while his parents worked in a nearby field.

But it soon became clear they were more than comfortable in his presence, with the youngster happy to share some of his food with the visiting troupe.

The monkeys kept returning, day after day, to visit their young friend in Allapur, roughly 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the city of Bangalore, his uncle said.