Wolf Children Wolf children are children raised by wolves. Wolf children are discovered in remote places and their accounts excite our wonder and disbelief. But their stories are anecdotal so can easily be dismissed as unreliable or false. Or can they? Has a human child ever been raised by wolves? Feral Children Wolf children are a subset of feral children: children who grow up from a very young age, for a significant period of their lives, with strictly minimal or no human contact, and survive, isolated on their own or somehow adopted by animals. These children were abandoned by their parents or lost by accident. Then, sometimes years later, they are discovered and returned to human society, often against their will, and their stories unfold. Adoptive parents of feral children turn out to be not just wolves, but dogs, chimpanzees, monkeys, goats, bears, leopards, jackals, ostriches, pigs and other animals. Feral children are of interest in themselves and are also fascinating for what we can learn about the early socialisation and development of humans. How would we turn out as adults if isolated from society in our formative years? How much of our early development is inborn and how much is acquired? Can we hope to make up in later years for lack of learning in early life? Is language innate or learned? Could we speak to animals if we were raised in their society? How much of us is specifically human and how much is animal? In short, how do we become human? We cannot ethically deliberately raise children in isolation to answer such questions, but the study of feral children might provide some insight. Mythology Feral children in myth and fictional literature grow up as intelligent, physically strong and morally virtuous personalities. Their unusual childhood upbringing imprints on them a wild and uncorrupted state of nature which favours their later social relations with humanity. Tarzan, a creation of Edgar Rice Barrows, brought up by chimpanzees, is a prime example. Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli is another wholesome character. Mowgli is possibly the most famous wolf child. When just old enough to walk he is lost by his parents in the Indian jungle. He stumbles upon a mother and father wolf in a cave with their four cubs. They adopt him and raise him to manhood as one of their own. He hunts with the pack, has many adventures with his animal friends, and rises to be champion beast of the jungle. Another widely circulated tale about wolf children is the story of Romulus and Remus of the 8th century BC. They were abandoned to die, as a mode of infanticide, on the banks of the River Tiber, but were saved by a wolf who suckled them. After many dangers the grown twins discovered their heritage, killed the usurper of their grandfather's dominion - who had made their mother abandon them in the first place - and went on to found Rome on the River Tiber. There is no good evidence that any of this actually happened but it makes a ripping good yarn. Reality Feral children raised by wolves and other animals is a common theme in legend and fiction but the reality is more peculiar. Carl Linnaeus was a famous eighteenth century Swedish naturalist with a passion for classifying creatures to show their relationships to each other. When he came to sort out feral children he was so confounded, seeing them as a kind of non-human gnome, that he placed them in a separate class from the rest of humanity. He called them Homo ferus (wild man) to distinguish them from the human species Homo sapiens (wise man). Kamala & Amala Possibly the most broadly documented wolf children are the two Indian girls, Kamala and Amala. Villagers caught the girls in 1920 in remote countryside west of Calcutta. They had been spotted previously with adult wolves and were found in a wolf den with two wolf cubs. The den was dug up, the mother wolf killed and the girls taken away. J A L Singh, an Anglican missionary, who ran an orphanage, took them in and gave them their names. Kamala was thought to be five or six years of age and Amala around two years old. They were dishevelled, ate raw meat in the manner of dogs, and howled but could not talk. The were indifferent to temperature - a characteristic of people leading rugged lives - had sharp hearing, good vision in the dark and a strange gleaming look in their eyes. Kamala and Amala stood and walked on all fours. Kamala was so adept as a quadruped that she could outstrip on four legs anyone on two legs and climb and jump easily. But like many other children of her feral background she never seriously mastered walking upright and resorted to hands and knees when needing to. Amala died the year after she was found. Kamala survived into her teens and managed to learn only some three dozen words. Djuma The Wolf Boy According to newspaper reports, in 1962 a boy of about seven years of age was found running with wolves in the desert of Turkmenistan. When he was seized to take back to civilization the wolves charged in to protect him and were all shot. The boy was named Djuma and cared for in a hospital in Ashkhabad. After a few years Djuma acquired a small vocabulary. He described how he went hunting with the wolves riding on his mother wolf's back and how later he hunted with the wolves by learning to run on all fours. Another newspaper report years later described him eating only raw meat and still quadruped. His carer thought he would never stop being a wolf. These reports are not substantiated so are full of doubt as to whether or how much Djuma really had a lupine upbringing. Two Dog Children More recently a number of cases of dog children have come to light. The case of Ivan Mishukov was reported by newspapers in 1998. Mishukov was a six year old boy who lived for two years with feral dogs on the streets of Reutova, west of Moscow. Mishukov quit his mother and her alcoholic boyfriend when he was four and took to begging on the streets. He gave portions of his food to a pack of dogs. They accepted him and they all slept huddled together to keep warm during the icy winter nights and they kept him safe from anyone who might accost or attack him. Mishukov escaped from the police a number of times. After nearly two months of trying the police finally managed to distract the dogs with food and snatch Mishukov away. He was placed in care and, having learned to speak when he was with his mother, he was able to tell social workers that he felt at home with the dogs as they gave him the love and protection he needed. A newspaper story, circulated by Reuters in 2001, tells of another dog boy, a ten year old who survived for two years living with a pack of stray dogs in the Chilean town of Talcahuano. Alex Rivas was abandoned when five months old by his 16 year-old mother, was brought up in several orphanages but finally managed to escape. Alex lived at night in a cave on the outskirts of Talcahuano with over a dozen dogs. By day they scavenged the streets eating out of garbage cans and looking for thrown out food. He was know to locals and snarled at anyone who approached him. Eventually Alex was separated from the dog pack by police and captured. He was dirty, aggressive, clothed in rags and had broken teeth. He could talk but was inarticulate, uncommunicative and depressed. It emerged that he had suckled from a bitch, who had recently given birth, because he was hungry and wanted food. Alex was taken to a hospital and then to a child care centre but fled before he could be placed with foster parents. Skills Acquisition Many feral children on examination are found to be seriously mentally retarded and physically small for their age, depending on how young they were when abandoned. The nervous system of very young children is malleable and depends on experience to shape the behaviour and skills needed for later life. If abandoned very young they may never make up for lost experience. Take language. Children learn the basics during this malleable period. If language is not acquired then, they may never be able to learn more than a rudimentary vocabulary, like Kamala. Instead of acquiring human skills, feral children adopt the habits of their adoptive animals. If they live with wolves or dogs they growl and howl or bark. Non-invasive scanning techniques carried out on contemporary feral children show their brains can be 30% smaller than a normal brain, evidence that the right kind of early interaction is essential for normal development. However, it is not always clear whether feral children suffer trauma during their feral years, which subsequently affects their ability to learn, or whether there were abandoned because of a pre-existing sub-normality. Authentication Determining the past of young children living wild for a long time is difficult. Unless the children can talk after they are found, the circumstances of their upbringing can only be surmised. Even if the children manage to talk after they are found, we cannot take it for granted that what they say is correct. The evidence that some feral children have been raised by wolves invariably rests on the testimony of a handful of well intentioned but possibly misled people. Their reasoning may be that young children cannot survive alone, wolves were in the area or the child was found in a wolf den, therefore wolves must have adopted the child. Living alongside feral urban dogs is credible. But a child actually living with wolves would be remarkable. Wolves are not known to adopt babies of other species, so why would they adopt humans? It is difficult to see what might lead wolves to take in such a strange smelling, clumsy animal. Further Reading Candland, Douglas Keith (1993): Feral children and clever animals: reflections on human nature. Oxford University Press. Relates the story of Kamala and Amala. Maclean, Charles (1977): The wolf children. Penguin Books, London. Includes the story of Amala and Kamala, based on Rev Singh's journal. Feral Children © Wolf Trust 2004. All rights reserved.

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