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.
9 responses so far ↓
1 K // Aug 21, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Quite interesting. Very sad.
2 holly // Feb 9, 2008 at 7:33 pm
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!
3 Natalie // Feb 11, 2008 at 10:20 am
i’m doing a research project on feral children, and this helped alot. thank you.
4 Jeadiz // May 23, 2008 at 5:18 am
I totally agree with Holly!
5 vera // Jun 20, 2008 at 11:49 pm
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!
6 Kier // Oct 6, 2008 at 6:36 pm
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.
7 Ashley // Oct 7, 2008 at 9:36 am
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.
8 Lisa // Nov 19, 2008 at 2:29 pm
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??
9 onera // Nov 29, 2008 at 12:41 pm
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
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