6 cases of children being raised by animals

Samstwitch

Senior Member
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6 cases of children being raised by animals

Unlike Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, these tales of feral kids surviving in the wild are decidedly darker and reportedly true

To coax her two daughters to sleep, British housewife Marina Chapman would tell them bedtime stories about growing up in the jungle. These were no fairy tales, though — they were based on her own life. At the age of 5, Chapman, who then lived in Colombia was reportedly kidnapped and abandoned in the jungle, left for dead. She managed to join in cahoots with a tribe of capuchin monkeys, "copying what they ate and drank, their social activities, their language," until she was a part of the family, which she stayed with for five years. Chapman chronicles her extraordinary tale in her book The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of the Girl Raised by Monkeys, but hers is not the first incredible tale of a child raised in the wild. Here, Marina's story and five other reported cases of children raised by animals:

1. Raised by monkeys
When she was about five years old, Marina Chapman says she was kidnapped, probably for ransom, but was then abandoned in the Colombian jungle. For some five years, she lived out in the wild, where she was taken in by a group of capuchin monkeys, which experts say are known to accept young children into their fold. The animals taught young Marina how to catch birds and rabbits with her bare hands, so she was able to survive. She rejoined the human world when she was taken by hunters and sold to a brothel, from which she eventually escaped.

2.Raised by goats
In June 2012, social workers in Russia discovered a toddler who had been locked in a room with goats by his mother. The boy reportedly played and slept with the goats, but nourishment was apparently hard to come by as he weighed a third less than a typical child of his age. When the child was rescued, his mother had disappeared. Doctors have since tried to acclimate the toddler to human life, with some difficulty. "He refused to sleep in the cot. He tried to get underneath and sleep there. He was very scared of adults," one doctor said.

3. Raised by feral cats and dogs
In 2009, welfare workers were led to an unheated flat in a Siberian town where they found a 5-year-old girl they called "Natasha." While technically living with her father and other relatives, Natasha was treated like one of the many dogs and feral cats that shared the space. Like her furry companions, Natasha lapped up food from bowls left on the floor. She didn't know any human words and only communicated with hisses and barks. The father was nowhere to be found when authorities rescued the girl, and Natasha has since been placed in an orphanage.

4. Raised by wild cats
Argentinean police discovered an abandoned 1-year-old boy surrounded by eight wild cats in 2008. The cats reportedly kept the boy alive during the freezing winter nights by laying on top of him and even tried to lick the crusted mud from his skin. The boy was also seen eating scraps of food likely foraged by his protective brood.

5. Raised by wild dogs
A 10-year-old Chilean boy was found in 2001 to have been living in a cave with a pack of dogs for at lest two years. The boy had already survived a rough and unstable childhood, having been abandoned by his parents and then fleeing alternative care. Alone, the child sought refuge with a pack of dogs who helped him scavenge for food and even protected him. Officials said the boy might have even drunk milk from one of the female dogs. "They were like his family," a spokesman said.

6. Raised by wolves
One of the most well-documented cases of children raised by wild animals is that of Kamala and Amala, better known as the "wolf children." Discovered in 1920 in the jungles of Godamuri, India, the girls, aged 3 and about 8 had been living with a she-wolf and her pack. It's not known if the girls were from the same family, but the man who found the girls, Reverend J.A.L. Singh, took them back to his orphanage where he tried to get them accustomed to their human surroundings. While the girls made some progress over the years, both eventually came down with fatal illnesses leaving the reverend to wonder "if the right thing to do would have been to leave these children in the wild where I found them."
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
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I really believe animals in the wild are more benevolent then all the creatures we call modern human beings.
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
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5,049
Sam a very good posting: It really shows how bad human beings can be concerning children and how loving animals can be without judgment toward children.
 

Samstwitch

Senior Member
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5,111
Sam a very good posting: It really shows how bad human beings can be concerning children and how loving animals can be without judgment toward children.

Sadly, you are correct, Professor.
Check this out. Excerpts from Wikipedia. CLICK ME TO READ MORE!

A feral child (also, colloquially, 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, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. Some feral children have been confined by people (usually their own parents); in some cases this child abandonment was due to the parents' rejection of a child's severe intellectual or physical impairment. 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.

Documented/alleged cases: 14th to 19th Centuries

* Hessian wolf-children (1304, 1341 and 1344).
* The Bamberg boy, who grew up among cattle (late 16th century).
* Hans of Liege.
* An Irish boy brought up by sheep, reported by Nicolaes Tulp in his book Observationes Medicae (1672). Serge Aroles gives evidence that this boy was severely disabled and exhibited for money.[12]:199-201
* 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, found in the forests in spring 1663 and then brought to Poland's capital.
* The girl of Oranienburg (1717).
* The two Pyrenean boys (1719).
* Peter the Wild Boy of Hamelin (1724). Mentally handicapped boy, affected with Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome. He lived only one year in the wild.
* Marie-Angélique Memmie Le Blanc, the Wild Girl of Songi, also known as the Wild Girl of Champagne (France, 1731). This is the only case of a child having survived 10 years in the forests (from November 1721 to September 1731), and the only feral child who succeeded in a complete intellectual rehabilitation, having learned to read and to write. According to biographer Serge Aroles, Marie-Angelique was 19 years old when she was captured, learned to read and write, and died rich on December 15, 1775 at the age of 63. An Amerindian from Wisconsin (then a French colony), she was brought to France by a lady living in Canada and then escaped into the woods of Provence in 1721.
* The bear-girl of Krupina, Slovakia (1767). Serge Aroles found no traces of her in the Krupina archives.
* The teenager of Kronstadt (1781). According to the Magyar (Hungarian) document published by Serge Aroles, this case is a hoax: the boy, mentally handicapped, had a goitre and was exhibited for money.
* Victor of AveyronVictor of Aveyron (1797), portrayed in the 1969 movie, The Wild Child (L'Enfant sauvage), by François Truffaut. Once more, Serge Aroles gave evidence that this famous case was not a genuine feral child.
* Kaspar Hauser (early 19th century), portrayed in the 1974 Werner Herzog film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle).
* The Lobo Wolf Girl of Devil's River (1845) was captured in 1846, but escaped. She was last spotted at age 17 in 1852.

20th Century

* "ostrich boy". A boy named Hadara was lost by his parents in the Sahara desert at the age of two, and was apprehended by ostriches. At the age of 12, he was captured and taken back to society and his parents. He later married and had children. The story is popular in west Sahara. In 2000, Hadara's son Ahmedu told his father's story to the Swedish author Monica Zak, who compiled it to a book. The book is a mixture of the stories told by Ahmedu and Zak's own fantasy.
* Amala and Kamala, claimed to have been found in 1920 by missionaries near Midnapore, Calcutta region, India, later proved to be a hoax to gain charity for Rev. Singh's orphanage.
* Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja (ca. 1946, Sierra Morena, Spain) lived for 12 years with wolves until he was 19 in the mountains of Southern Spain. Rodriguez story was depicted in the 2010 Spanish-German film Entrelobos. For his portrayal of Rodriguez, young actor Manuel Camacho received a Best New Actor nomination at the 2011 Goya Awards.
* Syrian Gazelle Boy (1946): A boy aged around 10 was found in the midst of a herd of gazelles in the Syrian desert in the 1950s, and was only caught with the help of an Iraqi army jeep, because he could run at speeds of up to 50 km/h. This is a hoax, as are all the gazelle-boys (see below).
* Vicente Caucau (1948): Chilean boy found in a savage state at age 12, allegedly raised by pumas.
* Ramu, Lucknow, India, (1954), taken by a wolf as a baby, raised until the age of seven. Aroles made inquiries on the scene and classifies this as another hoax.
* Saharan Gazelle Boy (1960): found in Rio de Oro in the Spanish Sahara, written about by Basque traveller Jean-Claude Auger, using the pseudonym Armen in his 1971 book L'enfant sauvage du grand desert, translated as Gazelle Boy. When Serge Aroles made inquiries concerning this case in 1997, gathering testimonies in Mauritania, Armen himself admitted that he had written "a book of fiction".
* Genie, Los Angeles, California, discovered 1970. Confined to one room by her father for 12 years.
* Robert (1982). He lost his parents in the Ugandan Civil War at the age of three, when Milton Obote's looting and murdering soldiers raided their village, around 50 miles (80 km) from Kampala. Robert then lived in the wild, presumably with vervet monkeys, for three years until he was found by soldiers.
* Ramachandra (1970s and 1980s). First reported in 1973 in the Uttar Pradesh region of India, at roughly 12 years old, and as living an amphibian lifestyle in the Kuano river. He was captured in 1979 and taken to a nearby village. He only partly adapted to a conventional lifestyle, still preferring raw food, walking with an awkward gait, and spending most of his time alone in nearby rivers and streams. He died in 1982 after approaching a woman who was frightened by him, and who badly scalded Ramachandra with boiling water. Historian Mike Dash speculates that Ramachandra's uncharacteristically bold approach to the woman was sparked by a burgeoning sexual attraction coupled with his ignorance of cultural mores and taboos.
* Baby Hospital (1984). This seven-year-old girl was found by an Italian missionary in Sierra Leone. She had apparently been brought up by apes or monkeys. Baby Hospital was unable to stand upright and crawled instead of walking, and ate directly from her bowl without using her hands. She made the chattering noises of apes or monkeys. Baby Hospital's arms and hands were reported to be well developed, but not her leg muscles. She resisted attempts to civilise her, instead spending much of her time in an activity that is very unusual for feral children: crying.
* Saturday Mthiyane (or Mifune) (1987). A boy of around five who spent a year in the company of monkeys in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.
* Oxana Malaya, Ukraine, (1990s). Raised with dogs until the age of eight.
* Daniel, Andes Goat Boy (1990). Found in Peru, and was said to have been raised by goats for eight years.
* John Ssebunya, Uganda, (1991) raised by monkeys for several years in the jungle.
* Belo, the Nigerian Chimp Boy (1996) about two years of age, raised by chimpanzees for a year and a half.
* Ivan Mishukov (1998). Found near Moscow, raised by dogs for two years, and had risen to being "alpha male" of the pack.
* Edik, Ukraine (1999). Edik was found by social workers apparently living with stray dogs in an apartment.

21st Century

* Alex the Dog Boy (2001). Found in Talcahuano, Chile.
* Traian Căldărar, Romania (2002). Gypsy child born in Poland, he lived for three years with wild dogs in the wilderness. Now he is a "normal" child who likes football and mathematics.
* Andrei Tolstyk (2004) of Bespalovskoya, near Lake Baikal, Russia, abandoned by parents, to be raised by a guard dog.
* Cambodian jungle girl (2007). Alleged to be Rochom P'ngieng, who lived 19 years in the Cambodian jungle. Other sources questioned these claims.
* Name Unknown, Uzbekistan, (2007). Found after eight years.
* Lyokha, Kaluga, Central Russia (December 2007). He had been living with a pack of wolves, had typical wolflike behavior and reactions. He was unable to speak any human language. Taken to a Moscow hospital, he received some medical treatment, a shower and manicure, and several meals before escaping from the building. He is believed to still be in the wild.
* Danielle Crockett, Florida, United States (2007–2008). Dani had been locked in her room and deprived of human interaction for the first 7 years of her life. She was found and adopted and is currently undergoing efforts to acclimate her to human conditioning including learning English and effective communication.
* Natasha, Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia (2009), a five-year-old girl who spent her entire life locked in a room with cats and dogs, and no heat, water, or sewage system. When she was found, she could not speak Russian, would jump at the door and bark as caretakers left, and had "clear attributes of an animal".
* Chhaidy, Theiva near Saiha, Mizoram (2012), a four-year-old girl who returns from the jungle after 38 years.
 

Peregrini

Member
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465
I hate to pour cold water on this idea but, I must.
Just because a child was forced to exist in squalid conditions does not mean the same thing as the child having been raised "by" the animals it was raised "around". Animals do not have the same "charitable" notions that humans have. A carnivore will eat you if it sees you as food. It sees you as food, or a competitor for food, it you are not part of it's "group". (I use "group" because there are too many different names for groups of animals... pack, pride, etc.)
Sorry to disagree Professor opmmur but, wild animals are not benevolent. A wild carnivore will see a child as food without being loving or judgmental. It's just instinct.
I believe Walt Disney has had the most detrimental effect on how people view animals of anyone, ever, in the history of the world. He gave animals a voice and personality traits they do not have and wanna-save-the-world do-gooders have used that fallacy to actually interfere with the natural ebb and flow on the Earth. That means they get in the way of nature because they don't have a clue how it really works. There is a lot more that can be said toward this but I will leave it here... for now.
 

Opmmur

Time Travel Professor
Messages
5,049
Thank You for your comments; I can see both sides of the issues here and both have correct information.
 

Himalayan Hermit

Active Member
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986
ONLY last night I was watching the animated series Jungle Book and thinking to myself about real life examples of Mowglis. And today I see this thread :eek:
 

Apocalypse

Junior Member
Messages
101
I hate to pour cold water on this idea but, I must.
Just because a child was forced to exist in squalid conditions does not mean the same thing as the child having been raised "by" the animals it was raised "around". Animals do not have the same "charitable" notions that humans have. A carnivore will eat you if it sees you as food. It sees you as food, or a competitor for food, it you are not part of it's "group". (I use "group" because there are too many different names for groups of animals... pack, pride, etc.)
Sorry to disagree Professor opmmur but, wild animals are not benevolent. A wild carnivore will see a child as food without being loving or judgmental. It's just instinct.
I believe Walt Disney has had the most detrimental effect on how people view animals of anyone, ever, in the history of the world. He gave animals a voice and personality traits they do not have and wanna-save-the-world do-gooders have used that fallacy to actually interfere with the natural ebb and flow on the Earth. That means they get in the way of nature because they don't have a clue how it really works. There is a lot more that can be said toward this but I will leave it here... for now.

Wild animals ARE benevolent when they either realise that you are no threat to them, or do not determine you to be one [from the start].
They often choose to fight you as a last resort - as, in their "minds", life is always a fight or flight struggle. And I wasn't entirely raised by or on Walt Disney either.
 

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