Long since ancient times in legends and tales different nations There have been stories of animals raising human children. For a long time this was considered a fiction, until such poor fellows began to be found in the forests. “Mowgli’s children,” raised by animals, were studied back in the Middle Ages, but only psychiatrists of the 20th century were able to truly explain their behavior and justify the impossibility of returning to the human environment.

The concept of “feral man”

If we consider the concept of “feral people” from the position of psychologists and sociologists, then we can find out that these are individuals who were raised outside of human society. Translated from Latin, feralis means “dead, buried.” People deprived of the opportunity to communicate with others like themselves were considered lost to society.

In the English version, the word feral means “forest”, “wild”, “uncivilized”. This term was first used by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish scientist of the 18th century. He identified for people who grew up among animals their step in the evolutionary ladder and gave them the scientific definition of Homo ferns.

In modern sociology they are given the name “feral people,” and the first representative of this science to study their phenomenon was the American scientist Davis Kingsley. He began working on this issue in 1940.

Children became animal guardians of different ages. There are known cases when a wolf pack, dogs or birds became “parents” for babies, and there are examples that they accepted, nursed and fed children 3-6 years old.

Feral animals

At all times and among different peoples of the world, there have been myths about children raised by animals. As scientists explain this phenomenon, animals are excellent “educators” of human children, and not only in their natural environment.

Today you can often observe how pets take part in the lives of children: they lull them to sleep, guard them, protect them, and prevent them from falling or harming themselves in some way. The same instincts are characteristic of wild animals, especially those living in a pack. This is due to the fact that the animal community has its own hierarchy, ways of communication between its members and raising young animals.

Ancient stories about feral children

The most famous feral children of antiquity are Remus and Romulus, suckled by a she-wolf. As you know, many legends are based on historical facts, so the story of two brothers who lost their mother may also be true.

The boys were lucky that a shepherd found them, and they did not have time to run wild. In memory of their “foster mother,” Romulus and Remus founded Rome on the very hill where they spent their first years with the wolf pack.

Unfortunately, such stories rarely end so romantically, since feral people - children raised by animals - have serious mental disorders and are not capable of becoming full-fledged members of human society.

Wild “foundlings” of past centuries

Most often, wolves became the adoptive “parents” of children. This is due to the natural high level of parental instinct for these animals and the fact that they unite in packs in which there are long-term relationships between its members.

The first documented evidence that a wolf pack raised children was the Chronicle of the English city of Suffolk for 1173. Failed attempts to return a wild child to human life were recorded in 1341 in Hesse. The hunters found the boy in the wolf's den. When he was removed from the hole, he behaved like an animal: he bit, scratched, squealed and growled. Thanks to the surviving records, it became known that he died, unable to withstand captivity and feeding with human food.

No one at that time studied such phenomena; experts simply tried to return the captured children to a human form, which most often ended in failure.

Children-“bears”

There are often cases when feral people (examples from history are direct proof of this) were raised by bears. So, in 1767 in Hungary, hunters discovered a girl with blond hair about eighteen years old. She was in excellent health, had a strong tanned body and behaved very aggressively. Even after she was placed in a shelter, she refused to eat anything other than plant roots, berries and raw meat.

It is difficult to say how such children survive. Bears do not gather in packs, although they have strong long-term alliances between males and females. In the same way, it is unknown what the babies ate in the winter, when the animals hibernated. There are only a few recorded cases of bears raising children, one of them is a boy found in the 18th century in Denmark, the second is an Indian girl discovered in 1897.

All the documents of those years indicated that the children found had the habits of animals, had sharp eyesight, an excellent sense of smell, and could “talk” only with sounds that were usually made by the animals that raised them.

Feral people of the 20th and 21st centuries

Most often in the last century, children of the jungle were found in India. Among them were wolf children, panthers and leopards. For example, the world learned about two girls - Kamala and Amala, who were captured in 1920. One of them was one and a half years old, the other was 8 years old, but both had already developed wolf instincts. So, they did not tolerate daylight well, but at night they saw perfectly well, if only raw meat, lapped up water, moved on bent arms and legs quite quickly, and hunted chickens and small rodents.

The youngest girl could not stand the captivity and died a year later from nephritis. Kamala lived for another 9 years and during this period she was able to master primitive human skills: walking straight, washing with water, eating from plates and even saying a few words. But until her death she ate raw meat and offal.

As scientists note, feral people who have lived among animals for a long time completely adopt the habits of their “foster parents,” which do not disappear even after a long stay in human society.

Cases of detection of feral people are especially frequent in the period from 1990 to the present day. Whether this is due to the fact that the kids got negligent parents, or they themselves got lost in the forest as children, or maybe their habitat was simply disturbed, and therefore they were able to be caught, is unknown.

The importance of a child's social development

Scientists love to conduct experiments to prove their scientific theories. This method of learning the truth was not ignored by psychologists who wanted to prove that a child is already born with the need for socialization.

During the experiment, newborns were divided into 2 groups. In one they nursed the children, talked to them when feeding or changing diapers, and kissed them. In the other group, they did not communicate with the children, but did everything necessary to ensure that they were fed and looked after.

After a while, scientists noticed weight loss and other abnormalities in children who were deprived of affection, so the experiment was interrupted. Thus, scientists have proven that a person initially has a need for love and communication with his own kind.

Thus, it becomes clear why feral people are deprived of human feelings and rely purely on the animal instincts they have acquired.

The nature of feral people

All cases of discovering individuals raised by animals indicate that in the wild they were characterized by a strong desire to survive. It’s just that feral people couldn’t stay alive, even with the most better care from their animal “parents”.

Animals always act in accordance with what their instincts tell them, although there are cases when they experienced sadness when losing their offspring. It doesn't last long and short term memory allows them to forget about the loss, which is not at all like human behavior. A person may experience suffering from the death of a child throughout his life.

All Mowgli children acted as their instincts told them: they sniffed food and water before eating, defecated, hunted, ran away from danger and defended themselves just like their wild “parents.” This animal nature cannot be eradicated if the child has spent a long time among animals.

Humanizing the Aveyron Savage

Attempts to humanize feral children have always been made. One of the successful examples is the story of the Aveyron boy. It was discovered in the south of France in 1800. And although this teenager walked on straight legs, all other habits revealed an animal in him.

It took a lot of time and patience to teach him to go to the toilet where he was supposed to, not tear off his clothes and eat from dishes. At the same time, the boy never learned to play or communicate with peers, although no abnormalities were found in his psyche. This “savage” lived to be 40 years old, but never became a member of society.

Based on this, we can conclude that children deprived of human love lose the socialization abilities inherent in them at birth. They are replaced by instincts, which are less developed in ordinary people than in animals.

If the child is lucky and is found in early age, then he can be restored to his human essence and instilled in the proper manners of behavior. This was the case, for example, with five-year-old Natasha from Chita. She was raised by dogs who turned out to be the best parents than dad and mom. The girl barked, walked like dogs, and ate the same things they ate. The fact that she was found at such an early age gives hope that she will be able to “become human” again.

A boy from Uganda who was raised by green monkeys was able to fully recover. He came to them at the age of four, and when he was discovered 3 years later, he lived and acted like his “adoptive parents.” Since too little time had passed, the child was able to be returned to society.

The reason for the appearance of feral children

Too often these days, references are made to children raised by animals. In most cases, this is due to the indifference, carelessness or cruelty of their parents. There are plenty of examples of this:

• A girl from Ukraine who grew up in a dog house. From 3 to 8 years old, she lived with a dog, where her parents left her. In such a short period, the baby began to walk like a dog, bark and behave like her dog.
• A 6-year-old boy from Volgograd, raised by birds, could only chirp and flap his hands like wings when he showed emotions. He ate birdseed while locked in a room with parrots by his own mother. The child is now undergoing rehabilitation with psychologists.

Similar cases occur nowadays in large cities and small towns around the world: in Africa, India, Cambodia, Russia, Argentina and other places. And the worst thing is that today the unfortunate people are found not in the forests, but in houses, animal shelters and garbage dumps - scouring for food.

All of us are familiar with the story of Mowgli, a boy who grew up among wolves. Alas, real stories children raised by animals are not as romantic and fabulous as the works of the English writer and do not always end with a happy ending. For your attention - modern human cubs, who had neither the wise Kaa, nor the good-natured Balu, nor the brave Akela among their friends, but their adventures will not leave you indifferent, because the prose of life is much more interesting and much more terrible than the work of even brilliant writers.

1. Boy from Uganda adopted by monkeys

In 1988, 4-year-old John Ssebunya ran away into the jungle after witnessing a terrible scene - during another quarrel between his parents, his father killed the baby's mother. Time passed, but John never came out of the forest and the villagers began to believe that the boy was dead.

In 1991, one of the local peasant women, having gone into the jungle for firewood, suddenly saw in a flock of vervet monkeys, dwarf green monkeys, a strange creature, in which she recognized, not without difficulty, a little boy. According to her, the boy’s behavior was not much different from monkeys - he moved deftly on all fours and easily communicated with his “company.” The woman reported what she saw to the villagers and they tried to catch the boy. As often happens with children raised by animals, John resisted in every possible way, not allowing himself to pull himself together, but the peasants still managed to recapture him from the monkeys. When the vervet puppy was washed and tidied up, one of the village residents recognized him as a fugitive who went missing in 1988. Later, having learned to speak, John said that the monkeys taught him everything necessary for life in the jungle - climbing trees, searching for food, in addition, he mastered their “language”. Fortunately, after returning to the people, John adapted to life in their society without much difficulty, he showed good vocal abilities, and now the matured Ugandan Mowgli is touring with the Pearl of Africa children's choir.

2. Chita girl who grew up among dogs

Five years ago, this story appeared on the front pages of Russian and foreign newspapers - in Chita they discovered a 5-year-old girl, Natasha, who moved like a dog, lapped water from a bowl and, instead of articulate speech, only barked, which is not surprising, because, as it later turned out, the girl spent almost her entire life in a locked room, in the company of cats and dogs. The child’s parents did not live together and presented different versions of what happened - the mother (I just want to put this word in quotes), 25-year-old Yana Mikhailova claimed that her father had stolen the girl from her long ago, after which she did not raise her. The father, 27-year-old Viktor Lozhkin, in turn, stated that the mother did not pay due attention to Natasha even before he took the baby to him at the request of his mother-in-law. Later it was established that the family could not be called prosperous; in the apartment where, in addition to the girl, her father and grandparents lived, there was appalling unsanitary conditions, there was no water, heat or gas.

When they found her, the girl behaved like a real dog - she rushed at people and barked. Having taken Natasha from her parents, guardianship and trusteeship officials placed her in rehabilitation center So that the girl could adapt to life in human society, her “loving” father and mother were arrested.

3. Volgograd birdcage prisoner

The story of a Volgograd boy in 2008 shocked the entire Russian public. His own mother kept him locked up in a 2-room apartment inhabited by many birds. For unknown reasons, the mother did not raise the child, giving him food, but not communicating with him at all. As a result, the boy, until he was seven years old, spent all his time with the birds, when law enforcement officers found him, in response to their questions he only “chirped” and flapped his “wings.” The room where he lived was filled with bird cages and simply overflowing with droppings. As eyewitnesses reported, the boy's mother clearly suffered from a mental disorder - she fed street birds, took the birds home and lay on the bed all day long, listening to their chirping. She didn’t pay any attention to her son, apparently considering him one of her pets. When the relevant authorities became aware of the “bird boy,” he was sent to a psychological rehabilitation center, and his 31-year-old mother was deprived of parental rights.

4. Little Argentine rescued by stray cats

In 2008, police in the Argentine province of Misiones discovered a homeless one-year-old baby who was in the company of wild cats. Apparently, the boy was in the company of cats for at least several days - the animals took care of him as best they could: they licked dried dirt from his skin, brought him food and warmed him on frosty winter nights. A little later, we managed to find the boy’s father, who led a vagabond lifestyle - he told the police that a few days ago he lost his son while he was collecting waste paper. The dad told officers that the wild cats always protected his son.

5. Kaluga boy raised by wolves

2007, Kaluga region, Russia. Residents of one of the villages noticed a boy in the nearby forest who looked to be about 10 years old. The child was in a pack of wolves, who apparently considered him “one of their own” - with them he obtained food, running on bent legs. Later, law enforcement officers raided the “Kaluga Mowgli” and found him in a wolf’s den, after which he was sent to one of the Moscow clinics. The surprise of the doctors knew no bounds - after examining the boy, they concluded that although he looked like a 10-year-old, in fact he should have been about 20 years old. From living in a wolf pack, the guy’s toenails turned almost into claws, his teeth resembled fangs, his behavior in everything copied the habits of wolves.

The young man could not speak, did not understand Russian, and did not respond to the name Lyosha given to him during his capture, reacting only when he was called “kiss-kiss-kiss.” Unfortunately, the specialists were unable to return the boy to normal life - just a day after he was admitted to the clinic, “Lyosha” ran away. His further fate is unknown.

6. Pupil of Rostov goats

In 2012, employees of the guardianship authorities of the Rostov region, having come to check one of the families, saw a terrible picture - 40-year-old Marina T. kept her 2-year-old son Sasha in a goat pen, practically not caring about him, while When the child was found, the mother was not at home. The boy spent all his time with animals, played and slept with them, as a result, by the age of two he could not learn to speak or eat normally. Needless to say, the sanitary conditions in the two-by-three-meter room he shared with his horned “friends” not only left much to be desired—they were appalling. Sasha was emaciated from malnutrition; when doctors examined him, it turned out that he weighed about a third less than healthy children his age.

The boy was sent to rehabilitation and then to an orphanage. At first, when they tried to return him to human society, Sasha was very afraid of adults and refused to sleep in the bed, trying to crawl under it. A criminal case was opened against Marina T. under the article “Improper performance of parental responsibilities”; a lawsuit was filed in court to deprive her of parental rights.

7. Adopted son of a Siberian guard dog

In one of the provincial regions of the Altai Territory in 2004, a 7-year-old boy was discovered who was raised by a dog. His own mother abandoned little Andrei three months after his birth, entrusting the care of her son to his alcoholic father. Shortly after this, the parent also left the house where they lived, apparently without even remembering the child. The guard dog became the boy’s father and mother, who fed Andrei and raised him in his own way. When social workers found him, the boy could not speak, moved only like a dog and was wary of people. He bit and carefully sniffed the food that was offered to him.

For a long time they could not wean the child from dog habits - in orphanage he continued to behave aggressively, rushing at his peers. However, gradually the specialists managed to instill in him the skills of communicating with gestures, Andrei learned to walk like a human and use cutlery while eating. The guard dog's pupil also got used to sleeping in bed and playing with a ball; his attacks of aggression occurred less and less often and gradually disappeared.

For several decades now, scientists have been arguing about what is more important - acquired or innate traits of the human psyche? And what role do skills, living conditions, and a person’s environment play in the first years of his life? Study of a phenomenon called "Mowgli" reveals some of the answers to this question.

You can read about the amazing interaction between humans and wild animals in Kipling’s famous fairy tale. A wolf pack saved a little boy from a man-eating tiger and raised him. You can also remember about the series called "Tarzan", which tells the story of a man who grew up in the jungle among monkeys. I would like to know what underlay such works - real events or pure fiction?

It turned out that there is documentary evidence of stories when children were actually raised by animals. The role of so-called “educators” was played by bears, monkeys, wolves, tigers and even pigs. In almost all cases, this occurred in rural areas where parents were unable to closely monitor their child. It also happened that parents simply did not notice their child was missing for some time.

One of the most famous cases occurred near the village of Midnapur in eastern India. In the fall of 1920, two little girls were found near a wolf's den. One was 8 years old, and the other was about 1.5. Judging by the observations of experts, wolves cared about them just as much as they did about their offspring. The girls howled, scratched and moved deftly on all fours. They were sent to an orphanage, where the youngest soon died, and the eldest lived to be 16 years old. Over time, this girl learned to stand upright and walk like a normal person. She also started eating human food. But she was only able to learn about 30 words.

In 1972, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, a three-year-old child raised by a bear was admitted to the shelter of the Order of Mercy of Mother Teresa. The boy managed to live among people for only about 14 years. It has preserved the habits of wild life. He was not interested in his studies and was very cautious.

In the late 90s, a 5-6 year old boy was found in the tropical forests. His “parents” were baboon monkeys. Despite all the efforts of the people around him, he did not want to wear clothes, eat normal food (he only ate grass, fruits and vegetables), and continued to run on bent legs. Doctors believe that this child ended up in the jungle as an infant. The human world is hostile to him.

A sufficient number of studied examples of small children living among animals allowed scientists to draw disappointing conclusions. It is almost impossible to retrain these children and teach them human habits. If in the fairy tale about Magli events developed according to the highest level of morality, then in real life everything is much worse and more complicated. The famous Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus classified the animal world. His work became the basis of modern biology. In the section on the study of man, Linnaeus allocated a special section called “Homo sapiens feral.”

Scientists classify those children who began their lives among animals as the third civilization. Mowgli is not an animal, and they cannot be classified as ordinary people either. Children - Mowgli They get used to such an “animal” environment, they can growl or howl, some even have eyes that begin to glow in the dark. However, human physiology does not allow them to quickly escape from danger, hunt well, obtain food and compete for leadership in their pack.

Children - Mowgli - are not destined to completely escape into the life of the wild, just as they are not destined to completely return to the ordinary “human” one. Although, if such a child studied with a psychologist for many years, he took on “an approximate human appearance.” But, unfortunately, there have not yet been cases of a complete return to normal life.

Some animal predators have rescued children and cared for them for many years as their cubs. Dr. Dear Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, described all known cases of children living among animals from 1900 to 2004 in her book Supernatural Impulses. She counted 31 children with such a fate.

Here are six similar stories.

1. Girls raised by wolves in India

In 1920, 8-year-old Kamala and 18-month-old Amala were found in a wolf den in Midinipura, India. The incident was documented by Christian missionary J. L. Singh, who found them.

“These children were more ferocious than wolf cubs. Long, matted hair hung from their shoulders, their jaws had a strange wolf bite, and their teeth were angular and sharp. They ate no vegetables and could smell raw meat from a distance,” writes Dr. Abraham Sperling in his book Psychology for Millions.

After a year spent in an orphanage, Amala died. When this happened, her sister showed human emotions for the first time. Kamala lived another 8 years. During this time, she learned to walk on two legs and say a few words. True, when she was in a hurry, she ran on all fours.

The doctor who cared for them says they ate only milk and meat and did not sleep at night, Sperling writes.

Their foster wolf mother fiercely resisted when they wanted to take the girls away from her, as if they were her puppies, Barrett writes. She had to be shot. Other wolves from the pack came to the village and howled.

2The Boy Adopted By Monkeys After His Mother Was Killed

John Ssebunya from Uganda was 2 or 3 years old when he witnessed his father kill his mother. He escaped into the jungle, where monkeys took care of him for a year. When a local resident went deep into the jungle in search of firewood, he was amazed to see a child among a group of monkeys.

Britons Paul and Molly Wasswa later adopted the child. Journalist Evan Fergusson met him 10 years later in 1999. Fergusson, who described the meeting in an article in The Guardian, says Ssebunya could only speak Swahili and had a very bad stutter. Although the boy's mannerisms, including short answers and avoiding eye contact, were very different, his answers were logical and meaningful.

For example, when Fergusson asked him about bad attitude on the part of some children in human society, Ssebunya responded through an interpreter: “They were just interested. I don't want to think badly of them because of this. I was different." He could vaguely remember the first time the monkeys had approached him cautiously when he had been alone in the jungle for several days. He remembers the discomfort of sleeping in trees and how the monkeys taught him to navigate the trees in search of food.

Barrett said the monkeys threw sticks and stones at villagers who tried to take Ssebunya. She writes: “When children are found living among animals, their adoptive parents always resist violently when attempts are made to take them away.”

3. Ostrich boy from North Africa?

Sidi Mohammed was found at the age of 15 in 1945 in North Africa. He told anthropologist Jean-Claude Armen that he had lived with ostriches since he was five years old. This story was reported in Notes Africaines on April 26, 1945. This incident was also described in the book "Unexplained Phenomena" by Bob Rickard.

The boy told Armen that when he was five years old, he found an ostrich nest, and the birds began to take care of it. He stayed there, ate grass with them, learned to run at high speed and slept under their wings at night. Hunters found him and returned him to his parents, but he always yearned for life with the birds. This story is based entirely on the boy's words, and it is unclear whether Armen did any research to verify these facts.

4. Coop Boy in Fiji

Unlike the above-mentioned children, Sujeet Kumar was not adopted by animals in the true sense of the word. He was simply locked up with animals and spent so much time with them that he adopted their behavior. For several years he interacted more with chickens than with people, who simply came to feed him and sometimes hose him down to clean him.

When he was a child, his father was killed and his mother committed suicide. Kumar was taken in by his grandparents, but he showed noticeable signs of mental illness. They locked him in the chicken coop because they couldn't handle him, his cousin says.

In a 2011 interview with ABC, Australian businesswoman Elizabeth Clayton, after learning Kumar's story in Fiji, decided to take custody of him. By this time he had already become a grown man. He was found at the age of 12 in 1984, after which he was kept tied up in a mental hospital for almost 20 years, where, as in the chicken coop, he practically did not communicate with anyone. It still feeds on chicken food and attacks people, trying to peck them.

At the time of this interview, Clayton Kumar was already over 30 and still cackling and unable to speak. Clayton is trying to teach him to communicate, which she believes is necessary in order to find another guardian when she dies. She is over 60 years old and Kumar is about 30, so she is worried about his future. She says that if he doesn't learn to communicate, it will be difficult for him to find a guardian.

5. South African Boy Raised by Monkeys

Mthiyane from South Africa lived among monkeys for a year after his mother abandoned him. He was found when he was 5 years old and sent to an orphanage, but it wasn't until he was 15 that he learned to walk upright on two legs.

Even 10 years later, he still has not learned to speak and refuses to eat cooked food. Mthiyane's story is briefly mentioned in the book Child and Adolescent Development: An Integrated Approach by David F. Björklund and Carlos Hernandez Blasi.

6. Boy raised by wolves in Central Asia

In 1962, geologists discovered Dzyuma running with a pack of wolves in the desert of Central Asia. They caught him in a net, but with great difficulty - all the wolves had to be killed. The boy was seven years old and spent the next 30 years in a hospital in Turkmenistan, writes Adriana S. Benzaken in her book Encounters with Wild Children.

He began speaking four years later and told scientists that he rode on the back of his wolf mother, and then she taught him to ride on the backs of the other wolves in the pack.

Question: is he able to survive and become a full-fledged person? Small child in conditions of complete isolation from society, worries writers and psychologists. The former paint rosy pictures of reunification with society, the latter shake their heads sadly, talking about the missed sensitive period of development. Why are characters like Mowgli, Tarzan or Bingo Bongo impossible in real life?

Feral children: difficulties of rehabilitation

There are several reasons why, as soon as an individual is born, he may find himself far away not only from his parents, but also from human civilization as a whole.

1. In families where the father or mother has mental problems (often due to drug addiction and alcoholism), children are not given due attention, or, on the contrary, aggressive parenting methods are used. Little victims become disillusioned with people and begin to seek protection from domestic or street animals.

1. Adults completely isolate children with certain developmental disabilities, such as autism, and do not communicate with them. In some underdeveloped countries, such babies are abandoned in the forest to get rid of the “extra mouth.”

1. In rural areas of subtropical and tropical zones, cases of infant abduction by wild animals are common. Or small children go into the forest on their own and cannot find their way back.

Social isolation at an early age leads to mental degradation, which is called “Mowgli syndrome” in scientific circles.

Clinical picture of the disease

Wild Mowgli children (ferals from the Latin feralis - buried) copy the habits of their “foster parents”, which are most often wolves, dogs and monkeys. When trying to establish contact, they show panic and aggression: they try to bite, scratch, or cause injury.

Having been separated from their own kind at an early age, “human cubs” move mainly on all fours and eat only raw food. They express their emotions not by crying, but by sounds: barking, roaring, squealing, hissing, howling. They don't know how to laugh and are afraid of open fire.

A long stay side by side with wild animals is reflected in the appearance of “Mowgli”. Their skeleton, especially their limbs, are deformed: their hands resemble twisted bird legs, their legs do not fully straighten. From running on all fours, massive calluses form on the knees, the jaws develop disproportionately, and the teeth become sharp, like those of predators. Such children move with enormous speed by human standards, have great dexterity and developed senses of touch: hearing, vision, and smell.

Important: after being captured and trying to socially adapt, people raised by animals rarely come to terms with new conditions of existence and quickly die. The fate of the survivors is no less sad - they will vegetate in homes for the mentally retarded until the end of their days.

Scientific explanation of the phenomenon of “feral children”

There is a scientific explanation for the fact that “Mowgli” in real life, like Kipling’s hero, cannot become people in the full sense of the word. They were in the company of animals at the moment when the most important skills were formed:

• speech;
• behavioral stereotypes;
• eating habits;
• personal self-identification.

That is, in the period between 1.5 and 6 years, which is also called sensitive. As a result, their intellect, instead of actively developing, degraded, giving way to primitive instincts of survival. The musculoskeletal system has also undergone irreversible changes, making walking on two legs without additional support almost impossible.

Important: after the onset of puberty, from about 12 to 14 years old, people with Mowgli syndrome can only be trained by forcing them to memorize words or movements. But they will no longer become an independent, conscious person.

The chances of rehabilitation increase significantly if you end up in social isolation after 3, or even better, 5 years. And real stories of people brought up in exceptional conditions prove the correctness of this hypothesis.

The most famous "human babies"

The twins Romulus and Remus can be considered the first Mowgli children in world history. According to legend, they were born by the royal vestal Rhea Silvia from the god of war Mars. The brothers were taken away from their mother and thrown into the Tiber, but they managed to survive, and the she-wolf fed the babies with her milk.

The twins remained absolute people, and Romulus even founded Rome. It is believed that he did a lot for the formation and prosperity of the “Eternal City”. Over the years, it is difficult to separate truth from fiction, but the outcome of the infant wanderings of Romulus and Remus can be called prosperous. Their brothers in misfortune, whose names also remained in history, were much less fortunate.

An unknown boy, resembling a wild animal in appearance and behavior, was captured by residents of the Aveyron department, in the south of France in 1800. According to descriptions of contemporaries, he ate roots and vegetables stolen from the gardens of local residents, moved on all fours and did not wear clothes. The foundling, about 12 years old, did not speak and did not respond to questions addressed to him.

The boy ran away from people trying to give him shelter 8 times, but they caught him again and tried to “tame” him. Finally, the little savage was handed over to medical student Jean Itard, who set out to return his ward to normal life. The methods used by the young doctor when training Victor—that’s the name of the foundling from Aveyron—are still used by psychologists when working with mentally retarded children.

The boy began to react adequately to the behavior of those around him and even uttered two words, but otherwise communicated with gestures. After devoting 5 years to trying to socialize the teenager, Itard handed him over to the care of his housekeeper. Victor died as a 40-year-old man, having failed to adapt to human society.

After the fact, a version was put forward that the boy initially suffered from autism, for which his relatives abandoned him at the age of 2.

The film “Wild Child” was based on this story.

There are suggestions that Kipling wrote the story about Mowgli based on real events from the life of an Indian wolf boy discovered by hunters in Uttar Pradesh in 1872. In those days, ferals were not uncommon in a country where jungle and savannah occupy large areas, coming very close to human habitation.

Seeing a 6-year-old kid frolicking near the animal’s den in the company of wolf cubs, the hunters were not surprised. Having driven out the predators with smoke and killed them, they took the “find” with them and handed it over to the local priest, Father Erhardt. The missionary named the boy Dina Sanichar (this surname means "Saturday" in Urdu) and tried to civilize him. The baby moved only on all fours, howled like a wolf and rejected any cooked food, preferring raw meat with bones.

Subsequently, Sanichar was able to wear clothes, although he did it extremely casually and even moved in an upright position, but his gait remained uncertain. The boy-wolf did not learn to say. The only thing he adopted from people was the habit of smoking, which is why he died, contracting tuberculosis at the age of 34. All this time he lived alone in a missionary shelter.

Another story of Mowgli children raised by wolves. Girls from India were found near the city of Paschimbanga in 1920. The peasants were frightened by two ghosts that appeared at night along with a pack of wolves and reported this to the missionaries.

The manager of the local orphanage, Joseph Lal Singh, went into the forest to find out the cause of the strange phenomenon. Having tracked down the wolf's lair, he looked in and saw girls curled up in a ball, who bore little resemblance to human beings. The forest children were named Amala and Kamala. The first was 18 months old at the time of discovery, the second was about 8 years old. Both savages exhibited behavior typical of ferals.

Singh, who took “patronage” over them, kept a diary where he described the lives of his charges. Amala died a year later from a kidney infection. Her sister, or rather “comrade in misfortune,” grieved for a long time, expressing her emotions not only with wolf howls, but also with tears. However, after the death of the younger girl, the eldest became more attached to people, learned to walk upright and a few words. In 1929, Kamala died of kidney failure.

There is a version that the story of the wolf girls is just a falsification, since no one except Singh mentions them anywhere.

When this native of Uganda was 3 years old, his father brutally dealt with his mother before his eyes. The frightened boy disappeared into the jungle, where he came under the protection of a flock of dwarf green monkeys - vervet monkeys. In 1991, when John was 6 years old, he was noticed on a tree branch by a certain Millie, a resident of a nearby village, who was collecting firewood in the forest.

The kind-hearted woman took the foundling to her home, where, despite desperate resistance, she washed and put it in order. It turned out that John developed hypertrichosis, either from a long stay in the wild, or due to nervousness. When the boy was fed hot food, he almost died, because his body, accustomed to raw food, refused to accept boiled foods. In addition, the baby was found to have giant tapeworms up to 1.5 m in length.

John was later transferred for rehabilitation to the family of the founders of the children's human rights association, Paul and Molly Wasswa. Since the monkey boy spent the first years of his life among people, he was able to partially socialize. After 10 years, John not only fit into public life, but also became a soloist of the “Pearls of Africa” choir, with which he tours throughout Western countries.

The heroine of the following story was kidnapped from her home village in 1954 by a gang of Colombian slave traders and, for unknown reasons, abandoned in the jungle. It would have been difficult for a 4-year-old girl if she had not been accepted into a troop of capuchin monkeys. Over the course of several years, the victim forgot human language and adopted many of the habits of her rescuers.

She was then caught by local poachers and sold to a brothel in the city of Cucuta in northeastern Colombia. Too young to serve clients, Marina performed the duties of a servant until one day she ran away and began to lead a street life.

Having gathered her own gang of young beggars, the girl traded in theft and fraud, and after a while she ended up in a mafia family, where she turned into a sex slave. Fortunately, 14-year-old Marina was rescued by her neighbor Marugia and sent to live with her daughter in Bogota. Later, the girl and her patrons left the country, settling in the English city of Bradford.

Marina doesn't know her real name. She got married, gave birth to two children and wrote an autobiographical book, “The Girl with No Name,” where she told about her adventures.

One of the most famous Mowgli children of our time. A resident of a Ukrainian village near Kherson, born in 1983, found herself in the world media because of her strange “dog-like” behavior. When a girl at the age of 8 was discovered by journalists, she rushed at them barking, and then ran on all fours, lapped water from a bowl and performed other similar acts.