It is not Tarzan or one of those movies, there are actually feral children that have been found over the years. Pretty much over a hundred of these isolated children.
These children are referred to as feral children because they were brought up or they lived with animals as their guardians.
The cases of feral children are always different, although most were abandoned by their parents when they were still babies or very young. While monkeys are the most popular to care for human babies left out, there are cases of some of these children raised by dogs, goats, and even wild creatures like wolves and bears.
Please don’t ask how the animals are able to keep the children healthy and away from cold and rains and unfavorable weather conditions. The thing, however, is that when found, the children mostly are with no social skills and even imitate the animals that brought them up. Fitting into the human society has never been the easiest of tasks for a feral child.
Among the things that happen to them are aggression, isolation, and most of them never fully come back.
Below are some feral children as collected by wiredbugs:
Table of Content
Names: Kamala and Amala
Feral children raised by chimps and monkeys are well known. For Kamala and Amala, however, it was completely different as they were raised by wolfs. Referred to as wolf children, the two were discovered in 1920 in the jungles of Godamuri, India. At the time, they were aged 3 and about 8.
The two, who it remains unknown whether they were sisters, were raised by a she-wolf who had them among her pack. It was a reverend, J.A.L. Singh, who took them to his orphanage and tried fitting them back into the human way of living.
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When they were found, the girls were only able to run on all fours, howled, and with no interest in the human way of living.
Soon, however, they fell down with serious illness. While Amala, who was the younger of the two later died, the elder girl was able to survive and come to adapt to living with humans only to die a few years later, leaving the reverend to wonder if taking them from the wild was wise.
Oxana Malaya: Dog girl
Although she was born a normal child, Malaya found herself hanging out when she was abandoned by her alcoholic parents at a very young age. As a result of this, she started living with dogs at the age of 2.
For the next five years, she would depend and live among dogs in a small village of Novaya Blagoveschenka, in the Ukraine. She took care of herself as the pack did, and even ate from what they ate.
By the time she was found by a neighbour who reported the case, she was already 7 and she had already learned to behave very much like dogs. She did not only walked on four, she also barked, ate, and had the instincts of dogs. She was aggressive and without any social skills.
Many years later after showing what she had learned as a dog child to her boyfriend by barking and behaving like dogs, he got scared and ended the relationship.
Alex Dog Boy: A Chilean boy
In 2001, there was a report on a Chilean boy, who although shouldn’t entirely be a part of the feral children, also had an interesting story that linked him to animals.
As reported, he was abandoned by his abusive parents at the age of five. This forced the boy to stray along wild dogs which became his family.
Before moving in with the dogs in the caves in the southern port town of Talcahuano. The boy moved with the dogs and even ate with them. When found, he showed aggressive tendencies and signs of depression.
Bello, the Nigerian Chimp Boy
Bello was found in 1996 at the age of 2 in Nigeria. The suggestion in the case of the boy was that he was abandoned by his parents when he was six months as a result of his physical and mental disability.
From that point, the boy was raised by the chimps in the Falgore forest. After he was discovered, Bello had taken to the lives of the primates and even walked like them. He continued exhibiting some of their tendencies such as leaping around and clapping, until 2005 when he died.
John Ssebunya: Raised by Monkeys
As a child of between 2 and 3 years old, John saw his father murder his mother in 1988. The father soon disappeared after the horrible act, leaving the child behind.
This forced Ssebunya to wander into the forest where he was accepted by monkeys. They fed him and soon taught him to look for food and even climb trees.
He was found in 1991 when Milly Sebba a villager in the Ugandan village went into the forest in search of firewood. She sought for help and the boy was able to be taken from the monkeys and brought back to the village where it was easy to identify him.
Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja: Wolfman
Another among the feral children is Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja who found himself living with wolves after he was sold to a farmer.
Having suffered from serious abuse in the hands of his stepmother, Pantoja who was then between 6 and 7, opted for a life of solitude and was taken in by wolves after the old farmer he was sold to had died. With them, he spent up to 12 years and was found when he was 19.
According to him, he fed on whatever the wolves fed on and after leaving the animals, he continued to struggle to adapt to the human society.
Syrian Gazelle Boy
Like others, it was believed that this boy who was found in 1946 among a herd of gazelles in the Syrian Desert was abandoned by his parents.
This feral child was found when he was between 10 and 11. The boy had already gotten used to the animals that even after he was captured and taken to a state asylum, he had continuously tried to escape until 1955.
More interesting is that before he was captured, an Iraqi army jeep was brought to use. That is because he was very fast with running and could go as fast as 50 mph. Some even claimed it was 50 kph, which is very much unlikely.
Even though this boy was found to be extremely thin, he was with much strength and fitness. He has even been described as the bone of steel.
Dina Sanichar
As it was with the story of Amala and Kamala, so was it with Sanichar. He was found at the age of 6 in a wolves cave in 1867. It was believed that he was also abandoned by his parents.
He was found in the Bulandshahr region of India by hunters who at first thought he was an animal, only to realize it was in fact, a six-year-old boy. He walked on both hand and legs when he was found, and would tear the clothes worn on him.
After he was taken away from the wolves, he was taken to an orphanage in Agra, where he lived with other children. Nevertheless, he was unable to fully get into the human society most especially when it came to talking. For feeding, at first, he lived on bones and raw meat but later got used to cooked food.
Dina Sanichar lived until 1895 when he died at the age of 44.
Shamdeo: Raised by wolves
It was in a forest in India that a boy of 4 was found. Shamdeo was found in 1972 not only living with wolves but also playing with wolf cubs.
The boy had sharpened teeth and had cravings for blood since he fed on raw meat. He had dark skin and long hooked fingernails. As a result of his years with the wild, he had learned to hunt for chicken which he would eat raw, and it was very easy for him to bond with dogs.
After he was found, it was possible to get him off eating raw meat but no one was able to get him to talk. As such he was only able to communicate using sign language.
By 1978 he was taken to Mother Theresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying in Lucknow. It was here that he got another name; Pascal. In February 1985, Shamdeo died.
‘Mowgli Girl’, Ehsaas: Raised by Monkeys
The latest among the feral children found is Ehsaas. This girl was found early 2017 in the Katarniya Ghat forest range in Bahraich, India. She was found among a troop of monkeys, even though it is not known for how long she had been with them.
However, when attempts were made to separate her from the animals, they tried holding on to her just as she tried sticking with them. She was found with wounds on her body and seemed very much scared of humans, even as she showed some animal like tendencies, without making or understanding any speech.
There are, nevertheless, some versions of the report that suggested the girl may not be a feral child after all, as she may have gotten to the animals only a few days earlier.
The name Ehsaas (“feeling” in Urdu) was given to her in the Nirvan Hospital, an NGO-run home for mentally challenged children in Lucknow, where she was taken to.
After she was found, a man and his wife came forward to claim her as their daughter. According to them, she got missing when they went shopping.
Ramzan Ali Shah, 54, and his wife, Nazma, 35, came out with pictures that had a small girl with striking similarities to the girl found.
According to them, the 10-year-old girl is actually suffering from some mental problems, and she went missing last year. Shah said they had done everything within their power including writing to the police to seek their help.
The irony, however, is that the doctor in whose hospital said that the Mowgli girl did not respond when she saw the couple, hence there would be a need for a DNA test to prove the relationship.
More so, to the claim that she is mentally challenged, doctors say they have reasons to believe otherwise as she is learning things quite fast.
Marie-Angélique Memmie Le Blanc
Also known as the wild girl of champagne appears on this list because she is one of the most famous feral children.
It was in France, in the 18th century that this girl who would later be nicknamed The Wild Girl of Champagne, The Maid of Châlons, and The Wild Child of Songy, was found. Although most people are of the opinion that a large part of her story was more fiction than real, there are others who believed she actually lived in the wild for up to 10 years.
According to records, she was first seen in the district of Champagne in a French village of Songi. When it was sighted by villagers when she went to get water, a dog was sent after her, but she immediately killed the dog and jumped to a tree where she fell asleep.
After she was caught by villagers, the girl who only communicated in shrieks and squeaks fed on dead birds and raw animals as cooked ones made her throw up.
Interestingly, while much of her story remains unknown, it has mostly been agreed that she was able to later grow into a nun, or maybe she later spent her life in a nunnery, in retreat.
Natasha the feral child
Of these isolated children, Natasha’s case as a feral child was quite different. Although she was living in a house with her father, grandfather, and other relatives, this five-year-old grew as one among the dogs and cats in the house.
In fact, the little girl was isolated in a flat with the animals and she became more like one of them.
According to the police, this girl who was rescued in her home in the Siberian town of Chita was practically raised by animals.
Feral children documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9ENOYbEoF8
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