Feral child

A feral child (feral, i.e., "wild" or undomesticated) is a human child who, from a very young age, has lived in isolation from human contact and has remained unaware of human social behavior, and unexposed to language. A feral child is an extremely rare phenomenon, and there are only just over a hundred known cases.

Origins and effects
Feral children may be separated from society by being lost or abandoned in the wild. The category also includes children who have been purposely kept apart from human society, e.g. kept in a room in solitary confinement. Sometimes abandonment is because of parents rejecting a child's severe intellectual impairment or physical disability, and some feral children experience severe child abuse or trauma before being abandoned.

Some myths and legends, and later many fictional stories depict feral children as having been reared by wild animals such as wolves or bears. Famous examples include Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan and Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli, as well as the legend of Romulus and Remus.

Legendary and fictional feral children are often depicted as growing up with relatively normal human intelligence and skills and an innate sense of culture or civilization, coupled with a healthy dose of survival instincts; their integration into human society is made to seem relatively easy. In reality, however, 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 subject is treated with a certain amount of realism in François Truffaut's 1970 film L'Enfant Sauvage (UK: The Wild Boy, US: The Wild Child), where a scientist's efforts in trying to rehabilitate a feral boy meet with great difficulty.

It is essentially impossible to convert a child who became isolated at a very young age into a relatively normal member of society. Such individuals need close care throughout their lives, if they are to live in human society. As they are "discovered", feral children also tend to become the subject of lively scientific and media interest. Once the excitement dies down and their limitations in terms of learning culture and social behaviour become obvious, frustration can set in and they often spend the rest of their lives being passed from one caregiver to another. It is common for them to die young, though obviously, their potential lifespan if they had been left in the wild is difficult to ascertain.

Ancient reports
Herodotus, the historian, wrote that Egyptian] pharaoh Psammetichus I] (Psamtik) sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly, he gave two newborn babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people. When one of the children cried “becos” (a sound quite similar to the bleating of sheep) with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was Phrygian because that was the sound of Phrygian word for “bread.” Thus, they concluded that the Phrygians were an older people than the Egyptians. The veracity of this story is, of course, impossible to determine.



Legend has it that Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Rhea Silvia and Mars, were raised by wolves. Rhea Silvia was a Vestal Virgin, and when it was found that she had been pregnant and had had children, the local King Amulius ordered Rhea Silvia to be buried alive and for the children to be killed. However, the servant who had been given the order instead set them in a basket on the Tiber river. The children were taken by the river god Tiberinus to the shore where a she-wolf found them and raised them until a shepherd named Faustulus found them, while they were still toddlers. He and his wife Acca Larentia, who had always wanted a child but had never been blessed with one, raised the twins, who would later figure prominently in the events leading up to the founding of Rome (named after Romulus, who eventually kills Remus to have the city founded on the Palatine Hill rather than the Aventine Hill).

Real-life cases
Of the approximately 100 cases often cited, few have been confirmed or well studied, many lack detail, and many may have been exaggerated and embellished. Here is a limited list:
 * Hessian wolf-children (1341-1344).
 * The Bamberg boy, who grew up among cattle (late 1500s).
 * Hans of Liege; the Irish boy brought up by sheep, reported by Nicolaes Tulp in his book Observationes Medicae (1672).
 * The three Lithuanian bear-boys (1657, 1669, 1694).
 * The girl of Oranienburg (1717).
 * The two Pyrenean boys (1719).
 * Peter the Wild Boy of Hamelin (1724).
 * The girl of Songi in Champagne (1731).
 * The Hungarian bear-girl (1767).
 * The wild man of Kronstadt (end of eighteenth century).
 * Victor of Aveyron (1797), portrayed in the 1969 movie by François Truffaut The Wild Child (L'Enfant sauvage).
 * Kaspar Hauser (early 1800s), portrayed in the 1974 film by Werner Herzog The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser  (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle).
 * Amala and Kamala, females aged 1 and 8 raised by wolves, found in 1920 near Midnapore, Calcutta region, India.
 * Genie, Los Angeles, California, discovered 1970.
 * Oxana Malaya, Ukraine, (1990s) raised with dogs until the age of 9.
 * John Ssebunya, Uganda, (1991) raised by monkeys for several years in the Ugandan jungle.
 * Belo, the Nigerian Chimp Boy (1996) about 2 years of age, raised by chimpanzees for 1 1/2 years.
 * Ivan Mishukov (1998) found near Moscow, raised by dogs for six years, and had risen to being "alpha male" of the pack.
 * Traian Căldărar, Romania, (2002) lived 3 years of his childhood with wild dogs in the Romanian wilderness.
 * Andrei Tolstyk (2004) of Bespalovskoya, near Lake Baikal, Russia, abandoned by parents, to be raised by a guard dog.
 * Sujit Kumar, Fiji, (2005) raised in a chicken coop.