A feral child (also called wild child) is a young individual who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, with little or no experience of human care, social behavior, or language. Such children lack the basics of primary and secondary socialization. The term is used to refer to children who have suffered severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away. They are sometimes the subjects of folklore and legends, often portrayed as having been raised by animals. While there are many cases of children being found in proximity to wild animals, there are no eyewitness accounts of animals feeding human children.
Description Feral children lack the basic social skills that 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 after walking on all fours their whole lives, or 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 a natural 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.
There is little scientific knowledge about feral children. One of the best-documented cases has supposedly been that of sisters Amala and Kamala, described by Reverend J. A. L. Singh in 1926 as having been "raised by wolves" in a forest in India. French surgeon Serge Aroles, however, has argued that the case was a fraud, perpetrated by Singh in order to raise money for his orphanage. Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim states that Amala and Kamala were born mentally and physically disabled. Yet other scientific studies of feral children exist, such as the case of Genie.
History Prior to the 1600s, feral and wild children stories were usually limited to myths and legends. In those tales, the depiction of feral children included hunting for food, running on all fours instead of two, and not knowing language. Philosophers and scientists were interested in the concept of such children, and began to question if these children were part of a different species from the human family.
The question was taken seriously as science tried to name and categorize the development of humans, and the understanding of the natural world in the 18th and 19th century. Around the 20th century, psychologists were attempting to differentiate between biological behavior and culture. Feral children who lived in isolation or with animals provided examples of this dilemma.
In his 1849–1850 report, Report on Budhuk alias Bagree Decoits, William Henry Sleeman provided six accounts of feral children nurtured by wolves, two he had witnessed himself, which were published separately in 1852 as An Account of Wolves Nurturing Children in Their Dens and are thought to have likely inspired the character of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's 1894 novel The Jungle Book.
Cases
Journalistic cases
Raised by primates/monkeys Lucas, a native South African boy who was nurtured by a group of baboons. The boy was found in 1903. Marina Chapman claimed to have lived with weeper capuchin monkeys in the Colombian jungle from the age of five to about nine, following a botched kidnapping in about 1954. Unusual for feral children, she went on to marry, have children and live a largely normal life with no persisting problems. John, a boy who was discovered in 1974 in a jungle of Burundi with a troop of vervet monkeys. Robert Mayanja (1982) lost his parents in the Ugandan Civil War at the age of three, when Milton Obote's soldiers raided their village, around from Kampala. Robert then survived in the wild, presumably with vervet monkeys, for three years until he was found by soldiers of the National Resistance Army. Saturday Mthiyane (or Mifune) (1987), a boy of around five, was found after spending about a year in the company of monkeys in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He was given the name Saturday after the day he was found, and Mthiyane was the name of the headmistress of the Special School which took him in. At the age of around 17, he could still not talk, and still walked and jumped like a monkey. He never ate cooked food and refused to share or play with other children. In 2005, he was killed in a fire. John Ssebunya, from Uganda, was a toddler when his father killed his mother and hanged himself. Ssebuyna was taken in by vervet monkeys and lived among them for the next two years, learning how to forage and travel. When he was around seven years old, he was brought back to civilization. According to a local villager, when he was a child, the only forms of communication he was capable of were crying and demanding food, and he was a "wild boy" whom everyone feared. He has since gained full speech abilities and has also twice competed in the Special Olympics for Uganda.
Raised by wolves
The Hessian wolf-children (1304, 1341 and 1344) lived with a population of Eurasian wolves in the forests of Hesse. Dina Sanichar, discovered among Indian wolves in a cave in Sikandra (near Agra) in Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1872, at the age of 6. He went on to live among humans for over twenty years, including picking up smoking, but never learned to speak and remained seriously impaired for his entire life. Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja (, Sierra Morena, Spain) lived for 12 years with Iberian wolves in the mountains of Southern Spain. He was discovered at age 19.Lupine Lore by Walter Tarello Rodríguez's story was depicted in the 2010 Spanish-German film Entrelobos. For his portrayal of Rodríguez, young actor Manuel Camacho received a Best New Actor nomination at the 2011 Goya Awards.
Raised by dogs Oxana Malaya was an eight-year-old Ukrainian girl who lived with Black Russian Terriers for six years. She was found in a kennel with dogs in 1991. She was neglected by her parents, who were alcoholics. The three-year-old, looking for comfort, crawled into the farm and snuggled with the dogs. Her behavior resembled that of dogs more than humans. She walked on all fours, bared her teeth, and barked. She was removed from her parents' custody by social services. As she lacked human contact, she did not know any words besides yes and no. Upon adulthood, Oxana has been taught to subdue her dog-like behavior. She learned to speak fluently and intelligently and works at a farm milking cows, but remains somewhat intellectually impaired.У героини публикации «фактов» оксаны малой, которая выросла в… Собачьей конуре, нашлись родной брат и маленькая племянница, тоже оксана – 2003 follow-up article in Fakty i kommentarii . Ivan Mishukov, a six-year-old boy born in Reutov, Russia, was rescued by the police in 1998 from wild dogs, with whom he lived for two years. He ran from his mother and her abusive alcoholic boyfriend at the age of four. He earned the dogs' trust by giving them food and in return the dogs protected him, eventually considering him the leader of their pack. When the police found him, they set a trap for him and the dogs by leaving food in a restaurant kitchen. Because he had lived among the dogs for only two years, he relearned language fairly rapidly. He studied in military school and served in the Russian Army. A 10-year-old Chilean boy (Dog Boy) was rescued in 2001, after living with street dogs for two years. At the age of five, the boy was abandoned by his parents. After fleeing a subsequent child care facility, he roamed the streets with 15 stray dogs. He spent his time with them living in a cave and searching for food, sometimes finding leftovers in garbage cans. In 2001, his situation was brought to the attention of the police. Upon a rescue attempt, the boy tried to escape by jumping into frigid ocean water. However, he was caught and hospitalized. He exhibited depression and aggressive tendencies and, although he could speak, he would rarely do so. Traian Căldărar, Romania (found in 2002) also known as "the Romanian Dog Boy" or "Mowgli". From the ages of four to seven, Traian lived without his family. The boy was found at the age of seven and was described as a three-year-old due to undernutrition. His mother had left her home because of domestic violence, and Traian ran from home sometime after his mother left. He lived in the wild and took shelter in a cardboard box. He suffered from infected wounds, having poor circulation, and a nutritional disease caused by vitamin D deficiency. Traian was found by Manolescu Ioan, who had been walking nearby after his car broke down. In the surrounding area, a dog that had been partially eaten was also found. Many assume that the boy was eating the dog to stay alive. When Traian was being cared for, he would usually sleep under the bed and wanted to eat all the time. In 2007, Traian was being taken care of by his grandfather and was doing well in 3rd grade at school. Andrei Tolstykh (2004) was raised by dogs in a remote part of Siberia from the age of three months to 7 years. He was neglected by his parents because he had speaking and hearing problems. Social workers who found the boy were curious about why the boy was not admitted to his local school. This boy was not able to talk as he lacked human interaction and had many dog-like characteristics including walking on all fours, biting people, and sniffing his food before eating. Madina was a three-year-old girl when she was found in Russia in 2013. Madina lived with dogs from birth until she was three years old. She slept with them in the cold, ate food with them, and played with them. Madina's father left her after she was born, after which Madina's mother became an alcoholic and neglected the child as well. When found by social workers in 2013, Madina was completely nude and engaged in dog-like behavior, including the chewing of bones. Afterwards doctors confirmed that she was still mentally and physically capable despite being neglected for nearly her entire life.
Raised by bears The three Lithuanian bear-boys (1657, 1669, 1694) – Serge Aroles shows from the archives of the Queen of Poland (1664–1688) that these are false. There was only one boy who lived in the forests of Lithuania with a group of Eurasian brown bears; he was found in the spring of 1663 and then brought to Poland's capital. The boy, named Joseph, was one of two boys seen by hunters living in the woods with the bears. He was captured at about age 9, learning to walk upright and eat cooked meat, but disliked clothes and never spoke well. The other boy was never captured; the two may have been accidentally abandoned by their families trying to avoid Tatar raids.
Raised by sheep An Irish boy brought up by Galway sheep, reported by Nicolaes Tulp in his book Observationes Medicae (1672). The boy reportedly avoided capture for some time and, after being caught at age 16 in 1672 and taken to Amsterdam, refused to eat normal food, endured extreme temperatures, and avoided other people. Serge Aroles gives evidence that this boy was severely disabled and was exhibited for money. A 14-year-old boy, also known as the sheep boy (2009), was found in Kyrgyzstan living in a Alai sheep flock. After his parents left to find work, he was cared for by his grandmother until she died. He then lived with sheep in a makeshift shelter for 8 years. He had no communication skills and could not use the toilet.
Raised by cattle The Bamberg boy reportedly grew up among cattle (late 16th century) in the region's mountains, and was later brought to the Prince of Bamberg's court. He initially continued his wild behavior, such as chasing and fighting dogs on all fours, but eventually accustomed to human society.
Raised by goats