What am I dreaming of?

My long body slinks across the dampened jungle floor. The skin of my belly hangs low, merely inches from scraping the dew-dropped flora with my golden fur.

The old ones say I was once a boy, lashed so many times that I transformed and sought refuge in the trees. All that is distant now- the present is to be found in the tooth-gashed flesh of creatures that did not know how to flee with haste.