When considering animal intelligence, I also include the fascinating tales of feral children.
Feral children are those who, for whatever reason, have been raised outside the confines of normal human behavior. Most often they find themselves abandoned in the wilderness at a young age. Sometimes they are raised by other animals — monkeys, wolves, etc. — other times they fend for themselves. Two famous examples from fiction are Mowgli (of Kipling’s The Jungle Book) and Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes.
(Sadder, but just as interesting, are the class of wild children who, due to neglect, are raised feral.)
What are these children like as adults? Are their thought-processes the same as those raised in a standard human society? How do they adjust to the “real world”? How does their relationship with the natural world change once they’ve been assimilated into society? And how does the way these feral children live influence our understanding of animal intelligence?
FeralChildren.com features a long list of children raised by animals, such as Kamala and Amala, the wolf girls of Midnapore. Or The lobo wolf girl of Devil’s River.
For more on this subject, read Genie: A Scientific Tragedy and Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children. The wikipedia also has a good article on feral children.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Quite interesting. Very sad.
this is extremely sad!! people need to leave these children in the wild when you take them out they are being taken away from family!! Imagine all of a sudden people come in and say you need to come with us, and then just take you! seiriously! How would you like that?? All they know is what they grew up as! ex: if there was a boy who grew up with wolves, then one day people come in and take him, he will be scared and he will act as a wolf does, because thats all he would know!! my opinon on this subject is leave them!! dogs dont come in and take the puppies we adopt away do they?? why should we do it to them?? we are hurting more than one living thing!
i’m doing a research project on feral children, and this helped alot. thank you. :)
I totally agree with Holly!
i completely agree with holly too. Just because humans think we have the best and only way of life, doesn’t mean we have to inflict our ideals of “civilised society” on those with different ideas!
I also agree, not only because of the emotional impact this would have on a child but more so the documented fact that feral children die soon after being removed from the wild. In most cases it is due to organ failure but with a mediocre understanding of the impacts their “wild life” has had on them there is no way to determine weather their shortened life is due to their life with their adoptive parents or if its due to the brash reintroduction to human society. I am also writing a thesis on Feral Children as they are fascinating enigma.
If you can help the children from being hurt and abandoned and give them a family of people that care for them, thats good. Way better than leaving them out there to be hurt or even worse killed. You cant just leave a poor feral child out there once you have found one, that would be morally wrong. If you can help someone and keep them safe you should.
How can they be ‘poor feral children’…thats their normality, their life, they cant live their lives through our eyes their FERAL.Taking them away from what they know could disrupt them further, yes it helps them physicaly but does it mentally…realy??
I understand what Ashley says. But most die if you take them away, because they never learned to think like us, they can’t adjust to our ways of live, they will not learn to speak our languages. If you take them you just scare them.
But if there is a chance that the child will survive, because it’s young enough too adept to our way of live I think we should. Because if we leave them, we abandon hoop that they can be a human. Make choices that are made on the concept of right and wrong instead of instinct, next to that, and all those other ways to be truly human. For they have no real live among wolves. They may be happy, but will not be able to mate what is in most animal groups an important thing. And what is that, what we humans seek, except happiness
But those found where too far gone from us, and are true animals. There is sadly no hope for them to join us as human, and those we should leave.
Some will say that why should they be humans, we are not better as those animals. For all of those people I don’t say we are better. But those Childs where born human, and it would be betraying them to not at least try to look for the possibility to give them a human live
Holly that was one of thee most ignoratn idiotic things ive ever read, Human beings dont belong with Animals so from a purely human aspect not to take these children out of the wild were they will probably die very young of a horrible death anyways , would be extrememly neglegent, and from a psychological and scientific point it gives us an emence ability to understand the human mind and psychi in a way that studying normal humans doesnt.
How can you agree with that statement that we should leave them be in the wild? A human child should be left out in the cold, in the wild? No fur, no claws… if evolution has taught us anything it’s that humans are intelligent creatures, we survive by our societies and technologies – not by our brute force. A child left in the wild because it’s what he is “used to” is a child left to die. Should Genie have been left in that room because it was what she was used to? No. Why not? Why would her story be any different than a child amongst animals? Or Victoria Barr left in her home, growing up with rats as her companions? We should have left her there? That makes absolutely no sense at all.
It’s interesting that you feel that we are intelligent because of our abilities to survive by our societies and technologies. Animals survive by their wits and we, at present, are surviving by eliminating the need to use ours. Protected by our concrete jungles. Ultimately the environment will be unable to sustain us, one way or another. I’d rather live with the wolves, they, in many ways are far more intelligent than we will ever be.
Those children rise on a diferent way… for best or worse, but that’s their faith… they develope some skills that aren’t apreciate on our society… and any way is better than being a consumated orphan, loveless and always placed as retarded…
Till now no one has watched, studied or learned feral children on the wild interacting with adoptive animal family… so who own the truth?
Probably we have a lot to learn from them as individuals and society.
In my opinion, the kids shouldn’t be in the wild to begin with. there are foster shelters, adoption agencies, all sorts of programs to give the children to if parents cant take care of them. leaving a child out in the wild is wrong, and if they are able to be saved, they should be
i see both sides, i think that if they are young, teach them our ways, if they are older, teachng them our ways can harm them mentally and physically. i dissagree with the “leaving them out there to die” thing, because if they have survived that long without being killed, then they can survive longer. they are tought better than us to defend themselves. this is a very intresting subject.
First of all i totally dont believe wolves are raising any humans. Either they catch you and next EAT you. So NO, children should not be kept or left somewhere in the woods where they’re often becomes a meal. I understand the woods are what they are use to but either way they are still humans. There is a possiblity they can learn physically & mentally human behavior. Most of you on here probally don’t even have children so i guess it’s real easy to say ” Leave the kids in the woods!”.
I don’t think human babies or children have ever been raised by wolves. If a wolf found a small human child alone it would see the child as an easy meal.
Maybe an animal such as a chimp might raise a human as it’s own.
I am not sure I buy the idea of human children raised by other animals, but if they have been from a very young age, yes they should be left were they are. They can live free or most likely if brought into the world of humans live in what amounts to a cage. Ashely I do have children, and they are all adults.
Yes, i believe that wild animals can raise a baby,every animal especialy the four leg animals,weather the animal is WILD or not knows a baby.
But is very bad to abandon your child,
Know matter how the child is PLEASE, try to LOVE and take CARE of your child.