Feral child

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A feral child (feral, ie. "wild" or undomesticated) is a human child who, from a very young age, has lived in isolation from human contact and has remained unaware of human social behavior, and unexposed to language. A feral child is an extremely rare phenomenon, and there are only just over a hundred known cases Template:Ref.

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Origins and effects

Feral children may be separated from society by being lost or abandoned in the wild. The category also includes children who have been purposely kept apart from human society, e.g. kept in a room in solitary confinement. Sometimes abandonment is because of parents rejecting a child's severe intellectual impairment or physical disability, and some feral children experience severe child abuse or trauma before being abandoned.

Many fictional stories and legends depict feral children as having been reared by wild animals such as wolves or bears. Perhaps the best known example is that of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan. Other famous examples in fiction are Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, the American tall tale of Pecos Bill, and the legend of the twin boys Romulus and Remus, reputed by myth to be the founders of Rome, who were abandoned at birth and raised by wolves. (See also Feral children in mythology and fiction.)

Fictional feral children are often depicted as growing up with relatively normal human intelligence and skills and an innate sense of culture or civilization, coupled with a healthy dose of survival instincts; their integration into human society is made to seem relatively easy. In reality, however, feral children lack the basic social skills which are normally learned in the process of enculturation. For example, they may eat with their hands at a great rate, be unable to learn to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright and display a complete lack of interest in the human activity around them. They often seem mentally impaired and have almost insurmountable trouble learning a human language. The subject is treated with a certain amount of realism in Francois Truffaut's 1970 film "L'Enfant Sauvage" (UK: "The Wild Boy", US: "The Wild Child"), where a scientist's efforts in trying to rehabilitate a feral boy meet with great difficulty.

It is essentially impossible to convert a child who became isolated at a very young age into a relatively normal member of society. Such individuals need close care throughout their lives. As they are "discovered", feral children become the subject of lively scientific and media interest. Once the excitement dies down and their limitations in terms of learning culture and social behaviour become obvious, frustration can set in and they often spend the rest of their lives passed from one caregiver to another. It is common for them to die young.

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Ancient reports

Herodotus, the historian, wrote that Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus I (Psamtik) sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly he gave two newborn babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people. When one of the children cried “becos” with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was Phrygian because that was the sound of Phrygian word for “bread.” Thus, they concluded that the Phrygian were an older people than the Egyptians. Whether or not the Herodotus story is true is not known.

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Real-life cases

Of the approximately 100 cases often cited, few have been confirmed or well studied, many lack detail, and many may have been exaggerated and embellished. Here is a limited list:

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See also

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Notes and references

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External links

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Bibliography

es:Niño salvaje fr:Enfant sauvage nl:Wolfskind fi:Susilapsi sv:Vilda barn zh:野孩子

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