The ‘real life Tarzan’ went on a quest to find pygmy elephants (Image: Paddy Hackett / SWNS)
Meet the “real life Tarzan” – who has spent five years living in the jungle and is now tracking elephants. The 26-year-old German wildlife expert, named Mika Etowski, set up in Kumana in Sri Lanka, and wanders the jungle barefoot. Known as a crocodile catcher, the expert was invited on a perilous expedition to the remote rainforests of northeastern Borneo alongside wildlife biologist, pilot, and filmmaker Paddy Hackett, 21, from Bozeman, Montana, US, in January this year.
Their mission was to find the elusive pygmy elephant – a critically endangered species with fewer than 1,500 left in the wild. Their journey, captured in Hackett’s upcoming documentary ‘The River of Life and Death’ shows both the thrill of discovery and the urgent need for environmental protection. Mika, who lives inside a hut with no electricity, said: “I like it cause of the density of animals. After short time, you become just another animal in the jungle.
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Mika Etowski, the real life Tarzan (Image: Paddy Hackett / SWNS)
“The jungle doesn’t care who you are or where you come from — it strips you down naked like the little baby you are. You have much less stress from noises like vehicles and only if you spend few days there, you’ll realise how much stress all those city noises actually put on your body.“
Paddy added: “He’s a real life Tarzan. Mika doesn’t need a pair of shoes, because his feet are like a dog’s foot. They’ve been calloused over from so many years of wandering through the jungle. I wanted him to join me on this expedition – as he lived in the jungle with elephants, crocodiles and leopards – I knew if anyone was able to track the rare pygmy elephants, it would be him.”
Paddy met ‘Tarzan’ several years ago in Sri Lanka, where he has lived in the jungle since right after high school.
The explorer – who was born in the Strasburg area of Germany in September 1998 – moved to Sri Lanka aged 22 and abandoned conventional life after saving money to pursue his passion for wildlife.
“He doesn’t have a job in the normal sense,” Paddy said. “He saved up money in high school and just started living in the jungle.”
Paddy recently joined ‘Tarzan’ on his most ambitious mission yet.
“Ever since I’ve met him, he’s been infatuated with this idea of finding pygmy elements and going on this expedition on a raft” he said. “He’s seen all the elephants – the Asian elephants, African elephants – but never the pygmy elephants. It was his dream.”
To find the pygmy elephants, the pair had to navigate the Kinabatangan River, notorious as one of Asia’s most treacherous waterways.
The river is infamously home to man-eating crocodiles, which locals say have developed cunning hunting tactics.
The night before they left, a villager was eaten by a crocodile. “There were these videos circulating online of crocodiles sticking their hands up out of the water, pretending to be like a drowning villager,” Paddy said. “That’s to lure rescuers. Dozens of people die every year along this river.”
The explorer was born in the Strasburg area of Germany in September 1998 (Image: Paddy Hackett / SWNS)
Despite warnings from local police who told them “you’re going to die if you raft this river”, Tarzan and Paddy pressed forward.
“What started off as an adventure to find these elephants quickly became something more complex and urgent,” Paddy said. “You see the destruction firsthand – the waste, the deforestation – and it changes you.”
The team soon discovered even areas considered untouched by humans were littered with trash.
“We were in parts of the rainforest where few people have ever set foot, if any, and we’re floating down this river surrounded by these trash islands,” Paddy said.
“Dozens and dozens of plastic bottles and debris piled up. It was shocking.”
The devastation wasn’t limited to waste – palm oil plantations had cleared vast swaths of forest, threatening the elephants’ habitat.
Paddy claims elephants in Sri Lanka, where Tarzan lives, are dying after ingesting plastic from landfills – a grim preview of what could face Borneo’s pygmy elephants.
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“It’s heartbreaking,” Paddy said. “The elephants eat the plastic, it blocks their digestive system, and they grow too weak to survive.”
The expedition’s climax came unexpectedly when local police intercepted the team, armed with machine guns, ordering them to abandon their journey.
In a dramatic twist, it was from the police patrol boat itself that the pair finally spotted the pygmy elephants.
“As they were taking us downstream towards the next village at midnight, we shined our flashlights off the boat,” Paddy said.
“And there they were – the pygmy elephants. Even the police were shocked. They had never seen them before.”
The expedition offered sobering insights into the scale of environmental destruction.
Paddy says the film’s message extends beyond Borneo.
He drew parallels to Montana, where landfills attract bald eagles and other wildlife, and to Sri Lanka, where he says elephants die from consuming plastic.
“Quickly after we started seeing this trash, I knew a major component of the film would be a call to action,” Paddy said. “Because we’re all consumers of waste, and we need to do better.”
Even at the expedition’s conclusion, the filmmakers refused to leave their raft – and the trash they had collected – in the jungle.
They paid extra to have it towed back to the city.
“That was important,” Paddy said. “We couldn’t contribute to the problem we were documenting. I don’t think it’s realistic for humans to have zero impact on the environment. That’s the consequence of being alive. But we can be mindful of the footprint we leave, and minimise it as much as possible.”