Feral Children.

 

A feral child - wild child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. Feral children may have experienced severe child abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away. Others are alleged to have been brought up by animals; some are said to have lived in the wild on their own. Over one hundred cases of supposedly feral children are known

Feral children lack the basic social skills which are normally learned in the process of enculturation. For example, they may be unable to learn to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright and display a complete lack of interest in the human activity around them. They often seem mentally impaired and have almost insurmountable trouble learning a human language. The impaired ability to learn language after having been isolated for so many years is often attributed to the existence of a critical period for language learning, and taken as evidence in favor of the critical period hypothesis.

The Wild Boy of Hesse

A wild boy found in the woods of Hesse, Germany  in 1341.

He appeared to be about 7 years old and supposedly had been kept by wolves.

This boy apparently died soon after being captured, but a second wild boy was seized three years later (1344) in the same region and reportedly lived to the age of 80 years.

According to records, both children were wild and immune to cold and discomfort, besides not being able to stand upright, consequently having to move around on all fours.

Wild Peter

In 1724, near the German town of Hamelin, a boy, described as a naked brownish black-haired creature, was seen running up and down in the fields. The boy was enticed into town, and once there immediately became a subject of great interest. He behaved like a trapped wild animal, eating birds and vegetables raw, and when threatened, he sat on his haunches or on all-fours looking for opportunities to escape. Peter was soon made the possession of King George I of England, where he lived the rest of his life. During his life Peter never learned to talk, showed a complete indifference to money or sex, and was never seen laughing. However he loved music, could be taught a number of menial tasks, and when he once got lost, he found his own way back home. Peter died in 1785.

Victor, The Wild Child of Aveyron

Victor, a boy of about 11 or 12, was discovered foraging for roots and acorns in the woods near Aveyron, France in 1799. Victor was taken to Paris, where he appeared to be human only in appearance. Victor behaved like an animal, ate rotten food with pleasure, was incapable of distinguishing hot from cold, and spent much of his time rocking back and forth like a caged animal. Victor was taken into the care of the brilliant scientist, Dr Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, who dedicated himself to the education of the boy. Victor proved to be a very difficult subject. Over the years, Victor only learned two terms, 'lait', and 'oh Dieu'. His sense of touch seemed to be far more important than his sense of sight, he did not demonstrate an ability to distinguish right from wrong, and like Peter before him, he was indifferent to sex. He did however, learn some menial tasks, such as setting a table. Victor lived the rest of his life in the care of his housekeeper, and died in 1828 at the age of 40.

Kaspar Hauser

Kaspar was discovered in 1828 in Nuremberg, Germany. He was unsteady on his feet, and only spoke the phrase 'I want to be a horseman like my father is'. Kaspar was about 16 years old, but he behaved like a small child. It appears that for most of his early childhood, Kaspar was imprisoned in a cage, with hardly any contact with the outside world. When a mirror was handed to him he used to look behind him to find the person in the mirror, and could not understand how faraway objects appeared smaller than objects close by. Kaspar had a keen sense of smell. He detested meat and alcohol, and was offended by the smell of flowers. He loved wooden horses, and he thought the sky was full of candles. Unlike many other of the cases described here, Kaspar did learn much, but in 1833 he was assassinated. The mystery of his early life and violent death have never been satisfactorily answered.

The Indian Wolf-Girls

The girls were taken to an orphanage in Midnapore (now part of Orissa). The children, Kamala, aged eight and Amala, aged 18 months, behaved exactly like small wild animals. They slept during the day and woke by night. They remained on all-fours, enjoyed raw meat, and were given to biting and attacking other children if provoked. They could smell raw meat from a distance, and they had an acute sense of sight and hearing. The youngest child, Amala, died one year later, Kamala would not leave her sister's body and had to be removed from the coffin.  Kamala lived for nine years in the orphanage until she died of illness at the age of 17. Kamala did acquire a small vocabulary, but she remained very different to other children until the time of her death.

Shamdeo

In May 1972, a boy aged about four was discovered in the forest of Musafirkhana, about 20 miles from Sultanpur. The boy was playing with wolf cubs. He had very dark skin, long hooked fingernails, matted hair and calluses on his palms, elbows and knees. He shared several characteristics with Kamala and Amala: sharpened teeth, craving for blood, earth-eating, chicken-hunting, love of darkness and friendship with dogs and jackals. He was named Shamdeo and taken to the village of Narayanpur. Although weaned off raw meat, he never talked, but learnt some sign language. In 1978 he was admitted to Mother Theresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying in Lucknow, where he was re-named Pascal and was visited by Bruce Chatwin in 1978.

He died in February 1985.

The Wild Girl of Champagne

The wild girl of Champagne had probably learned to speak before her abandonment, for she is a rare example of a wild child learning to talk coherently. Her diet consisted of birds, frogs and fish, leaves, branches and roots. “Her fingers and in particular her thumbs, were extraordinarily large,” according to a contemporary witness, the famous scientist Charles Marie de la Condamine. She is said to have used her thumbs to dig out roots and swing from tree to tree like a monkey. She was a very fast runner and had phenomenally sharp eyesight.

John Ssebunya

One day in 1991, a Ugandan villager called Milly Sebba went further than usual in search of firewood and came upon a little boy with a pack of monkeys. She summoned help and the boy was cornered up a tree. He was brought back to Milly’s village. His knees were almost white from walking on them. His nails were very long and curled round and he wasn’t house-trained. A villager identified the boy as John Sesebunya, last seen in 1988 at the age of two or three when his father murdered his mother and disappeared. For the next three years or so, he lived wild. He vaguely remembers monkeys coming up to him, after a few days, and offering him roots and nuts, sweet potatoes and kasava. The five monkeys, two of them young, were wary at first, but befriended him within about two weeks and taught him, he says, to travel with them, to search for food and to climb trees. He is now about 21 years old, and in October 1999 went to Britain as part of the 20-strong Pearl of Africa Children’s Choir.

The Syrian Gazelle Boy

Jean-Claude Auger, an anthropologist from the Basque country, was traveling alone across the Spanish Sahara (Rio de Oro) in 1960 when he met some Nemadi nomads, who told him about a wild child a day’s journey away. The next day, he followed the nomads’ directions. On the horizon he saw a naked child “galloping in gigantic bounds among a long cavalcade of white gazelles”. The boy walked on all fours, but occasionally assumed an upright gait, suggesting to Auger that he was abandoned or lost at about seven or eight months, having already learnt to stand. He habitually twitched his muscles, scalp, nose and ears, much like the rest of the herd, in response to the slightest noise. He would eat desert roots with his teeth, pucking his nostrils like the gazelles. He appeared to be herbivorous apart from the occasional agama lizard or worm when plant life was lacking. His teeth edges were level like those of a herbivorous animal. In 1966 an unsuccessful attempt was made to catch the boy in a net suspended from a helicopter; unlike most of the feral children of whom we have records, the gazelle boy was never removed from his wild companions.

Prava, the Bird Boy

The most recent case of Mowgli Syndrome was that of a seven-year-old boy who was rescued by Russian healthcare workers after being discovered living in a two-bedroom apartment with his mother and an abundance of feathered friends. It would appear the small apartment doubled as an aviary with cages filled with dozens of birds. In an interview, one of his rescuers, Social Worker Galina Volskaya, said that his mother treated him like another pet. While he was never physically harmed by his mother, she simply never spoke to him. It was the birds who communicated with the boy

“He just chirps and when realising that he is not understood, starts to wave hands in the way birds winnow wings.” Quote from Social Worker, Galina Volskaya.

The Leopard Boy

A leopard-child was reported by EC Stuart Baker in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (July 1920). The boy was stolen from his parents by a leopardess in the North Cachar Hills near Assam in about 1912, and three years later recovered and identified. “At the time the child ran on all fours almost as fast as an adult man could run, whilst in dodging in and out of bushes and other obstacles he was much cleverer and quicker. His knees had hard callosities on them and his toes were retained upright almost at right angles to his instep. The palms of his hands and pads of his toes and thumbs were also covered with very tough horny skin. When first caught, he bit and fought with everyone and any wretched village fowl which came within his reach was seized, torn to pieces and eaten with extraordinary rapidity.”

The Bear Girl

In 1937 George Maranz described a visit to a Turkish lunatic asylum in Bursa, Turkey, where he met a girl who had allegedly lived with bears for many years. Hunters in a mountainous forest near Adana had shot a she-bear and then been attacked by a powerful little “wood spirit”. Finally overcome, this turned out to be a human child, though utterly bear-like in her voice, habits and physique. She refused all cooked food and slept on a mattress in a dark corner of her room. Investigations showed that a two-year-old child had disappeared from a nearby village 14 years earlier, and it was presumed that a bear had adopted her.

Bello of Nigeria

Bello , sometimes referred to as the Nigerian Chimp Boy by the media, was found in 1996. No one is exactly sure of his age but many estimated that he was about 2 years old when he was discovered. He was found in the Nigerian forest and is both physically and mentally disabled, possibly the explanation for his abandonment at six months of age (a very common practice within the Fulani tribe). At such a young age, Bello of course could not fend for himself but somehow chimpanzees that lived within the forest took him in and raised him. He took on many chimpanzee behaviors, walking like them and displaying many of their animalistic behaviors.

When he was found in the Falgore forest, no one really mentioned the discovery. It wasn’t until about 2002 when popular news media found out and quickly learned that he was living in Tudun Maliki Torrey, a home for displaced children in Kano, South Africa. It was reported that he often disturbed other children within the home, throwing objects as well as jumping and leaping around at night. Six years later he was much calmer, though he still continued to display behaviors of a chimpanzee. Bello never did learn to speak despite the constant human interaction he had within the home, and in 2005 he died of undetermined causes.

 

Dina Sanichar

Dina Sanichar, named ‘the Indian Wolf Boy,’ is one of the oldest known cases of a feral child. He was believed to be about 6 years old when he was found by hunters in 1867. The hunters saw a pack of wolves enter a cave followed by a human who was running on four legs. The men smoked the wolves out of the cave. The men then went into the cave and found Dina. He was rescued from the jungles of Bulandshahr and put through treatment, though not much existed during his time.

 

People worked with him to rid him of his animalistic behaviors, which included eating raw meat, ripping off clothing, and eating food that was on the ground. After time he was able to be fed cooked meat, but he never did learn to talk.

 

Rochom Pn’gieng

On January 23, 2007, a Cambodian woman (‘the Cambodian Jungle Girl’) came out of a jungle located in the Ratanakiri province of Cambodi after spending more than 19 years living in the jungle. A family in a close by village announced that the Cambodian woman was their daughter and that her name was Rochom Pn’gieng, a girl who had gone missing in 1979. When she was found she was naked and terrified. She was discovered after food from a lunchbox went missing and a man went on a hunt to find out who had taken it. The man gathered friends and found the woman in the jungle, captured her, and called police.

 

Coincidentally, it turned out that the head policeman was her father- he recognized a prominent scar on her back. At 8 years old, Rochom Pn’gien and her sister got lost in the jungle while herding buffalo (the sister has never been found). After she was discovered many worked with her to try to get her to adjust back to a normal lifestyle. When found she could say the words: stomachache, mother, and father. Her psychologist noted that she seemed to be speaking other words, but that they were unrecognizable. When she was hungry or thirsty she would simply point to her mouth. She also crawled more often than walk and refused to wear clothing. Despite being captured and treated, she has often tried (and sometimes succeeded) to escape back to the jungle.

 

Traian Caldarar

Another recent case of a feral child, Traian Caldarar (found in 2002) is often referred to as ‘the Romanian Dog Boy’ or ‘Mowgli,’ after the main character in the Jungle book. He had lived apart from his family for 3 years since the age of 4. When he was found at the age of 7 he was said to be the size of an average 3 year old due to a lack of proper nutrition. His mother was a victim of domestic violence who left her husband. It is believed that Traian also ran away from the home sometime afterwards. Traian lived in the wild and when he was found in 2002 in Brasov, Rom?nia. He found shelter in a cardboard box covered with a sheet. Traian had a severe case of rickets, poor circulation, and infected wounds. Because of his age, those who discovered Traian believed that stray dogs helped to keep him alive.

Traian was only found because a car belonging to a shepherd named Manolescu Ioan broke down and he had to walk through pastures, during which he spotted the boy. Once he was taken into care, he would sleep under his bed instead of on it and would often want to eat. When he didn’t have food he became very irritable and often slept right after meals.

In 2007, it was reported that Traian was doing well under the care of his grandfather and in grade 3 at school. When asked about his school, he said “I like it here, coloring, play and learn to write and read. We have toys, cars, teddy bears, and the food is very good,”

 

 

Genie

For 13 years she was locked inside a room and strapped to her potty chair, other times she was bound in a sleeping bag and put inside a crib. Her father, the one behind the abuse, would hit her with a stick if she ever spoke and he would bark and growl at her to keep her quiet. He also forbade his other children and even his wife from speaking. Because of this, Genie had a very small vocabulary, consisting of about 20 words. The phrases she did know included “stop it” and “no more.” She was discovered in 1970 and today she is considered to be one of the worst cases of social isolation known. She was often thought to be autistic until doctors found out she was really 13 and was a victim of abuse.

She was taken to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles where she was treated for years. After some treatment, she was able to answer questions in one-word answers and she learned how to dress herself. However, she still held onto her learned behavior, including a “bunny walk” where she held her hands up in front of her as if they were paws. She also scratched and even clawed at things. Though she was moved around a lot, she found home with her therapist David Rigler for 4 years, who worked with her daily. He and his family taught Genie sign language as well as ways to express herself without speaking; drawing was a method. Genie then went to live with her mother, and then abusive foster parents, which then caused her to become mute again and afraid to speak. Today she is living somewhere in Southern California.