"He was about a month old, and he would just cling to you. If we didn't buy him, he would die," Caputo told National Geographic. "We fed him milk from a wine bottle and named him Kobi."

"We traded him for an army blanket, two plastic eating bowls, and a pack of cigarettes," said Caputo's traveling companion, Sidney Morris.

"Kobi was an absolute delight, with a great personality," Caputo recalled of their weeks traveling with Kobi. "He would often sit on my head when I was walking around a village, very curious about the world.

"We reached Nairobi, where we got in touch with Louis Leakey, who put us in touch with Jane Goodall."

After he arrived in Tanzania, Robert Caputo went