Buzz
Feral children are young humans who have grown up without human interaction, lacking exposure to care, affection, social behavior, and especially human language. They may be raised in isolation by animals, confined by humans (often parents), or left to survive in the wild. Over one hundred cases of feral children have been reported, and here is a collection of ten of the most notable ones.
10. The Story of Feral Child: Shamdeo
In May 1972, a boy around four years old was found in the Musafirkhana forest, approximately 20 miles from Sultanpur. He was seen playing with wolf cubs. The boy had dark skin, long curved nails, tangled hair, and calloused palms, elbows, and knees. His behavior was similar to that of Kamala and Amala: sharpened teeth, a desire for blood, eating dirt, hunting chickens, an affinity for darkness, and companionship with dogs and jackals. Named Shamdeo, he was brought to Narayanpur village. Despite being weaned off raw meat, he never spoke but learned some sign language. In 1978, he was placed in Mother Teresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying in Lucknow, where he was given the name Pascal and visited by Bruce Chatwin in the same year. He passed away in February 1985.
9. The Wild Girl of Champagne
The Wild Girl of Champagne likely had learned to speak before her abandonment, making her an exceptional case of a wild child who could speak clearly. Her diet included birds, frogs, fish, leaves, branches, and roots. When given a rabbit, she would immediately skin it and devour it. A contemporary witness, the renowned scientist Charles Marie de la Condamine, noted that “Her fingers, especially her thumbs, were remarkably large.” She reportedly used her thumbs to dig up roots and swing from tree to tree like a monkey. She was an incredibly fast runner and had exceptional vision. In 1737, when the Queen of Poland, the mother of the French queen, passed through Champagne to claim the Duchy of Lorraine, she heard about the girl and took her hunting, where the girl outran her and caught rabbits.
8. John Ssebunya
In 1991, a Ugandan villager named Milly Sebba ventured farther than usual in search of firewood and discovered a young boy living with a troop of monkeys. After calling for assistance, the boy was located in a tree and brought back to Milly’s village. His knees were almost white from walking on them, and his nails were long and curled. He had not been house-trained. A villager recognized the boy as John Ssebunya, who had been missing since 1988, when he was two or three years old, after his father murdered his mother and disappeared. For the next three years, he lived in the wild. John vaguely recalls monkeys approaching him after a few days and offering him roots, nuts, sweet potatoes, and cassava. The five monkeys, two of them young, were initially cautious but befriended him within two weeks, teaching him to travel with them, search for food, and climb trees. Now around 21 years old, John traveled to Britain in October 1999 as part of the 20-member Pearl of Africa Children’s Choir.
7. The Syrian Gazelle Boy
In 1960, Jean-Claude Auger, an anthropologist from the Basque country, was traveling alone across the Spanish Sahara (Rio de Oro) when he encountered some Nemadi nomads who told him about a wild child living a day's journey away. Following their directions, Auger eventually saw a naked boy in the distance, “galloping in gigantic bounds among a long cavalcade of white gazelles.” The boy moved on all fours but occasionally stood upright, suggesting he had been abandoned or lost at around seven or eight months, having already learned to stand. He frequently twitched his muscles, scalp, nose, and ears like the gazelles, responding to the slightest noise. The boy ate desert roots with his teeth, flaring his nostrils like the gazelles, and appeared to be herbivorous, though he occasionally ate agama lizards or worms when plant life was scarce. His teeth were flat, similar to those of a
6. Oxana Malaya
Oxana Malaya (born November 1983) was discovered in 1991 as an 8-year-old feral child in Ukraine, having spent the majority of her life living among dogs. She developed several dog-like behaviors and struggled with language acquisition. Oxana’s parents, who were alcoholics, were unable to care for her in their impoverished neighborhood, where wild dogs roamed freely. She lived in a dog kennel behind their house, where the dogs took care of her and taught her their behaviors and mannerisms. She would growl, bark, crouch like a wild dog, and sniff her food before eating it. She was found to possess unusually sharp hearing, smell, and vision.
SEE ALSO: Top 10 Evil Children
5. Prava, the Bird Boy
The most recent case of Mowgli Syndrome involved a seven-year-old boy who was rescued by Russian healthcare workers after being found living in a small two-bedroom apartment with his mother and a large number of birds. The apartment appeared to function as an aviary, with cages housing dozens of birds. According to Social Worker Galina Volskaya, one of the rescuers, the boy’s mother treated him like one of the pets. While he was never physically harmed, she never spoke to him. It was the birds who served as his form of communication.
“He just chirps, and when he realizes that he is not understood, he begins to wave his hands as though mimicking the motion of a bird flapping its wings.” - Social Worker, Galina Volskaya.
4. The Leopard Boy
A leopard-child was described by E.C. Stuart Baker in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society (July 1920). The boy was allegedly taken from his parents by a leopardess in the North Cachar Hills near Assam around 1912 and was later found and identified three years after the incident. “At the time, the child could run on all fours almost as fast as an adult man, and when dodging in and out of bushes and other obstacles, he displayed exceptional agility. His knees were covered with hard calluses, and his toes remained almost perpendicular to his instep. The palms of his hands, as well as the pads on his toes and thumbs, were coated with thick, tough skin. When he was first captured, he fought aggressively and bit anyone who approached, and any village fowl that came near was swiftly seized, torn apart, and devoured with remarkable speed.”
3. Wild Peter
The first widely known feral child was Wild Peter, described as 'a naked, brownish, black-haired creature' captured near Helpensen in Hanover in 1724, around the age of 12. He effortlessly climbed trees, survived on plants, and appeared unable to speak. He rejected bread in favor of stripping the bark from green twigs and sucking on the sap; eventually, he adapted to eating fruit and vegetables. Presented at the Hanover court to George I, he was later taken to England, where he was studied by prominent intellectuals of the time. He lived in society for 68 years but never learned to speak beyond saying “Peter” and “King George,” though his hearing and sense of smell were reported to be “exceptionally sharp.”
SEE ALSO: 10 Heartbreaking Accounts Of Child Suicide
This article is licensed under the GFDL because it contains quotations from the Wikipedia article: Oxana Malaya.
2. The Bear Girl
In 1937, George Maranz wrote about his visit to a mental asylum in Bursa, Turkey, where he encountered a girl believed to have lived with bears for an extended period. Hunters in a mountain forest near Adana had shot a she-bear, and shortly after, they were attacked by a powerful little ‘wood spirit.’ When finally subdued, it turned out to be a human child, yet remarkably bear-like in her vocalizations, habits, and physical traits. She refused to consume cooked food, slept on a mattress in a dark corner, and exhibited behavior consistent with that of a bear. Investigations revealed that a two-year-old child had gone missing from a nearby village 14 years earlier, and it was surmised that a bear had taken her in.
1. Kamala and Amala
The most famous wolf-children are the two girls captured in October 1920 from a vast, abandoned anthill occupied by wolves near Godamuri, located west of Calcutta in the Midnapore region. Villagers, under the guidance of Rev. JAL Singh, an Anglican missionary, captured the girls, and the mother wolf was shot. The girls, named Kamala and Amala, were believed to be around eight and two years old. According to Singh, they had misshapen jaws, elongated canines, and eyes that glowed in the dark with an eerie blue glare similar to that of cats and dogs. Sadly, Amala passed away the following year, but Kamala survived until 1929, having stopped eating carrion, learned to walk upright, and acquired a vocabulary of about 50 words.
