Four young children have been found alive after more than a month wandering the Amazon where they survived after their plane crashed in the middle of the jungle 

The four children – 13-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 9-year-old Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, 4-year-old Tien Ranoque Mucutuy and infant Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy – are currently recovering in a hospital in the Colombian capital Bogota after being taken there by air ambulance flown by the Colombian Air Force on Saturday.

Colombian President Gustavo Pedro  referred to the kids as "Children of the jungle,” after they survived an entire fortnight in the Amazon fending for the themselves.

“Their learning from indigenous families and their learning of living in the jungle has saved them,” Petro told reporters on Friday, after announcing on Twitter that they had been found 40 days after they went missing following a plane crash that killed their mother.

Petro said the children were all together when they were found, adding they had demonstrated an example of “total survival that will be remembered in history.”

“They are children of the jungle and now they are children of Colombia,” he added.

Authorities were able to locate the children after hearing the cries of the youngest child, Christin Ranoque Mucutuy, Indigenous leader Lucho Acosta told CNN on Saturday.

Acosta is the coordinator of indigenous scouts in the Colombian Amazon region who assisted in the search.

“They were very weak, we could find them by listening to the cries of the youngest one, but they were really tired, they were no longer on the move, like in the first few weeks,” Acosta said.

Revealing their discovery earlier in the day, the Colombian president had tweeted an image that seems to show search crews treating the children in a forest clearing, along with the words: “A joy for the whole country!”

Their grandmother, María Fátima Valencia, said she was “going to hug all of them” and “thank everyone” as soon as they were reunited in their home city of Villavicencio, where they live.

“I’m going to encourage them, I’m going to push them forward, I need them here,” she said.

The children, who appear gaunt in the photos, were evaluated by doctors before being flown out by the Colombian Air Force on an air ambulance to the Military Transport Air Command in Bogota, the capital, early Saturday morning.

Medical reports say they are dehydrated and still “cannot eat food” – but are well and out of danger.

The Children survived by eating Cassava Flour

Eating cassava flour helped save the lives of four children more than a month after their plane crashed.

The children ate “three kilograms (six pounds) of farina,” a coarse cassava flour commonly used by indigenous tribes in the Amazon region, said spokesperson Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez Suárez.

“Days after the crash, they ate the farina which they had carried there… but they (eventually) ran out of food and decided to look for a place where they could stay alive,” Suárez said.

“They were malnourished but fully conscious and lucid when we found them,” he added.

“Their indigenous origins allowed them to acquire a certain immunity against diseases in the jungle and having knowledge of the jungle itself – knowing what to eat and what not to eat – as well as finding water kept them alive – which would not have been possible (if they) were not used to that type of hostile environment.”