A Real-Life Tarzan

Raised in a wildlife park, Kody is happiest in the company of animals and he says he has a magical connection to them

- Nici De Wet

He’s happiest with his shirt off, cavorting in the open air with his four-legged buddies, some of whom weigh four times more than he does and could kill him with one swipe of a giant paw.

Meet Kody Antle – a real-life Tarzan who’s become a social media sensation thanks to his incredible bond with wild animals.

The 29-year-old’s Instagram account is filled with videos of him play-wrestling Bengal tigers, monkeying around with chimps and hanging out with Bubbles the elephant, all of which reside at his family’s Myrtle Beach Safari park in South Carolina in the USA.

It doesn’t hurt that Kody himself is easy on the eye. With his messy manbun, playful grin and chiselled body, he’s something of an attraction himself. But he shrugs offthe attention – his focus is solely on his animal pals with whom he seems to share a secret language.

“I really believe I have some otherworldly connection with these animals because of the way I’ve been raised,” he says. “We have this Tarzan-like connection.”

Kody may be “the only person in the world living like this”, says his father, Bhagavan “Doc” Antle.

The veteran conservationist founded the 20-hectare sanctuary in 1982 with the aim of saving many rare and endangered species from extinction. Today these include tigers, lions, cheetahs, orangutans, chimpanzees, gibbons and gorillas.

He credits his love for wild and exotic animals to his upbringing on a cattle ranch in Arizona where, from a young age, he’d raise and care for every animal he could get his hands on.