Stories of Children Who Have Been Raised by Wild Animals

Stories of children who have been raised by wild animals
A “feral child” is someone who has lived isolated from all human contact from a very young age, and
has no (or little) experience of human care, social behavior, emotions and mainly human language. There are
known cases of children allegedly raised by animals, especially wolves, bears, monkeys, gazelles and other
animals.
Case 1: Daniel, the Goat Boy - Peruvian Andes, Peru
Daniel the goat boy

In 1990, a child, eight years old, raised by goats in the Peruvian Andes was reported. He was
named after Daniel, the goat boy of the Andes. He walked with his four limbs, he could communicate with
goats, but he could not understand human language. It is assumed that he survived by feeding on goats'
milk and eating roots and berries. It was investigated by a team from the University of Kansas.
Case 2: Djama, Raised by Wolves - Turkmenistan
Djama, raised by wolves

In 1962, according to one report, geologists found a boy of about seven years old running with a
pack of wolves in a desert region of Turkmenistan, in Central Asia, south of Russia. The men threw a net
over the boy, but the wolves attacked to protect him, tearing the net. In the end, all the wolves were
killed. The boy bit one of his captors.
Four years before, a child, called Djuma (wild child), who had been taught to pronounce some
words, had gone missing. He told anthropologists that his family was murdered in a political purge and that
his mother slept on top of him to protect him. He then escaped and joined a pack of wolves. He also told
how he rode on his mother wolf's back when they went hunting, and later learned to run on all fours. He
was cared for at the Republican Hospital in Ashkhabad and it was not until years later that he became
accustomed to sleeping in a bed. In a 1991 news report, it was said that he still crawled on all fours, eating
only raw meat, and biting when angry. At the time, Dr. Rufat Kazirbaev, head of psychiatric research at
the hospital, doubted he would lose his wolfish ways.
Case 3: Apes-men - Peru

ape man
In 1974, the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, from Lima, reported on two “ape-men” who had been
together for 25 years and who at that time were being held in a hospital in that capital. It was found that
these “ape-men” were part of a family of eleven siblings, of whom six had microcephaly (including the two
ape-men).
Microcephaly is a disease of genetic origin that is characterized by the fact that the bones of the
skull do not grow and prevent the brain from developing. Babies affected by this disease can occur in very
young or very old parents. The “monkey-men” of Lima sometimes walked on all fours and had long, hairy
arms like apes. Their activities were instinctive in nature, and they made sounds reminiscent of the voices
of apes. Both also had congenital heart defects.
Case 4: Rochom P'ngieng, The Girl of the Jungle
Ronchom P'ngieng
Rochom P'ngieng or Ro Cham H'pnhieng, Cambodian wild child born in 1979 who was reported
missing at the age of 8 in the jungle, and turned up 19 years later on January 19, 2007. The announcement
of his appearance attracted international attention. His story was compared to Mowgli, the protagonist of
Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. She is known as the jungle girl as she was raised as a wild child. He got
lost in the Cambodian forest near his family's farm while buffalo watching with a cousin. She was
discovered 19 years after disappearing by a farmer whom she was trying to steal food from his barn. In
September 2007, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency reported that Rochom had disappeared into
the jungle without leaving a trace.
Case 5: Monkey Boy - Burundi

The monkey boy
The Jhoannesburg Times reported that in 1973 another child was found in Burundi, Africa, by missionaries
or hunters. The boy, about six years old, was playing with a group of monkeys and acting like one of them.
He ran on all fours or walked with his body. He ate fruits and vegetables with great relish, putting them
by the handful into his mouth. The American anthropologist Diane Skelly said that he was covered by a
thin layer of hair, which disappeared when he began to wear clothes. He tried to escape several times, but
in the end he became human. After being captured it took him several years to integrate into society.
Case 6: Kamala and Amala, the wolf girls - Midnapore, India
Kamala and Amala

The story of these girls begins in 1920, when a missionary named JAL Singh, When Singh went to
investigate what was happening, he ended up discovering two malnourished and wild girls in the den of
some wolves in a termite nest, whom the mother wolf defended as if they were her cubs. Although JAL
hesitated about what to do, before he could decide the natives killed the wolf and captured the two little
girls. Kamala was the oldest. He was 6 years old and his sister Amala was only 3. Thus separated from
their "familiar" environment, they only had each other, considering any other human being who approached
them hostile.
Just 1 year after entering the orphanage, little Amala fell ill and died of dysentery. When Amala
passed away, Kamala was seen crying (also, she had to be forcibly separated from her "sister's" coffin).
She spent the following weeks sheltering in a corner and howling at night. From then on Kamala became
more sociable, she showed some kind of progress, for example, she learned the basic concepts of quantity,
she began to walk on her own and acquired a vocabulary of about forty monosyllabic words. These referred
only to objects of vital and concrete importance. This is all that could be achieved until the death of
Karnala, after nine years of living there. In 1929 he contracted typhoid fever and died after two months
of illness. She was buried next to Amala in St.John's Christian Cemetery.
Case 7: Oxana Malaya, Raised by Dogs - Ukraine
Oxana Malaya
Oxana Malaya (Оксана Малая) (born November 1983) is a case of a feral girl found at the age of 8
in Ukraine in 1991, having lived most of her life in the company of dogs. He acquired a large number of
canine habits and had difficulties handling language. Since she was found, she has lived in the Baraboy
clinic for the disabled in Odessa. In 2006, at the age of 23, Oxana resided in a home for the mentally
disabled, where she helps care for the cows on the clinic's farm.
Case 8: The Gazelle Boy - Syria
The young gazelle

It is assumed that in 1945 the first gazelle child was captured in the Syrian desert. One of the
reports comes from Abdul Karim of Baghdad, written in August 1946 citing a Cairo source from 1945. The
boy was about 1.70 meters tall and his skin was smooth, although covered with fine hair. He was “so thin
that the bones could be easily counted beneath the flesh, yet he was physically stronger than a normal
man.”
The doctors studied him and thought he was about 15 years old. He did not speak and continued to
eat only grass. They taught him to eat bread and meat. It was said that perhaps he was the son of some
Bedouin and that he was abandoned in the desert, where he was adopted by gazelles. But according to Ivan
T. Sanderson, the story “turned out to be the fabrication of a bored Cairo journalist during World War
II.” Sanderson was probably right since it is incredible that the child could
was to reach that speed of almost double the Olympic record (in short races). This story would
have a sequel in 1960 and 1963.
Case 9: Wang Xianfeng, Girl Raised by Pigs - Liaoning, China
Wang Xianfeng
In 1984, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported the story of a peasant girl in Liaoning province,
northwest China, who had been breastfed by pigs and slept in her pigsty at night. Wang Xianfeng was left
as an infant with the family pigs because her deaf father and mentally retarded mother were unable to
care for her and no one else lived near them. The girl lived exclusively on sow's milk until she was almost
five years old. Then she began to eat the pigs' food. She was always the first one on the canal when it
filled up in the mornings. In 1983, psychologists discovered Wang, when he was nine years old, with the
intelligence of a three-year-old child.
Experts from the China University of Medical Sciences and the Anshan Institute of Psychometrics
took the girl into their care, and in 1987 when she was 13 years old she could read 600 Chinese
characters, count from one to 100, sing children's songs and do certain household chores.
Case 10: Rocco, Boy raised by goats or wolves - Abruzzi Mountains, Italy
Rocco
The same Daily Mirror, in its August 15, 1973 edition, reports that Italian shepherds found a
naked boy of about five years old in 1971, sheltered in a cave in the Abruzzi Mountains of central Italy.
Doctors believed he had been abandoned as a baby and had been raised by goats or mountain wolves. They
called him Rocco. Several families tried to “tame” him without success, after which he was placed in a
psychiatric hospital near Milan. He had not learned to speak and still ate with his hands. He walked on all
fours and liked to be petted – but he growled and retreated to corners when he was afraid.

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Stories of children who have been raised by wild animals

Case 1: Daniel, the Goat Boy - Peruvian Andes, Peru

Daniel the goat boy

Djama, raised by wolves

Case 3: Apes-men - Peru

Case 4: Rochom P'ngieng, The Girl of the Jungle

Case 5: Monkey Boy - Burundi

Case 6: Kamala and Amala, the wolf girls - Midnapore, India

Kamala and Amala

Case 8: The Gazelle Boy - Syria

The young gazelle

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