Four Children Who Were Raised By Animals

Mythology, literature and cinema have already presented us with several cases of children,  whether due to omission or some tragedy, who were created by wild animals, as was the case with wild children, such as Rômulo and Remo, and Tarzan . However, these cases also occur in real life and, although not very frequent, surprise researchers, psychologists and sociologists.

This type of child is known as a “wild child” (which comes from the Greek and means feral feralis). In the documented cases, these children face behavioral problems (aggressive behavior, tear clothes, howl or imitate animals), have difficulty walking upright and have speech problems.

Such attitudes stem from two situations, the first and most common occurring when children grew up in almost total isolation, therefore, they did not have the opportunity to learn the behavioral patterns of the human circles around them.

In the second, the children were (supposedly) raised by animals, they tend to behave like animals, by imitation.

So, My Animals presents some of the most famous cases of wild children raised by animals :

John Ssbunya

John Ssbunya is an African child who was raised and lived for three years with monkeys. When John was between 3 and 4 years old, he saw his father killing his mother. The boy ran away from home and went into the jungle.

Another version says that possibly his father abandoned him in the wild, as he no longer wanted to take care of him.

Once in the jungle, the boy was found by a bunch of monkeys who offered him food and decided to have him as their son. Soon, the boy began to mimic the monkeys’ movements and gradually became a member of the pack.

After nearly three years, a young woman named Milly Sebbavio saw him naked picking fruit with other young monkeys and alerted the community.

After a difficult rescue (neither the monkeys nor Jhon allowed him to be taken), John was assisted by a medical team and, although he had trouble feeding, he had parasites and a high degree of malnutrition, but he survived.

Today, John continues to live in Uganda and is part of a choir that has traveled to many countries, including England and France.

Natasha

Natasha’s case is quite recent, it was discovered in 2009, in Siberia, in the city of Chita, when she was 5 years old.

What surprised the authorities was that the girl was very aggressive to human contact, in addition to walking on all fours and drinking water with her tongue. She also communicated by barking.

The girl has been locked her entire life in a room with dogs and cats, being her only contact with humans when her parents entered the room to feed them. These were arrested and convicted of negligence.

Maria Isabel Quaresma Do Santos

Maria Isabel lived all her life confined in a chicken coop, she was discovered by a social worker, at the age of 9 years old.

Coming from a large family in Portugal, Maria was locked in a cage by her mother, who suffered from serious mental disorders, after she considered that Maria did not belong to the family.

Probably the most surprising thing about this case is that  the girl was not a stranger in the place where she lived, yet no one reported it.

Upon being rescued, the girl just cackled, moving like a chicken and going from states of euphoria and anger to total self-absorption.

In addition, she was fed exclusively with products for chickens, and developed serious growth problems.

Despite the efforts made, in her case, isolated for so long, together with extreme malnutrition, she remained in an unaltered state for more than two years, and lives in a psychiatric institution to this day.

Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja

Marcos Rodriguez is the most documented of all cases, he is a wild child from Spain, Andalusia.

Born in 1946, he was sold by his father to a shepherd who soon abandoned him in the mountains. He was found by a pack of wolves, with whom the child began sharing food and lived with them for 12 years.

During the Spanish Civil War, he was found and taken to a priest’s house and later to a convent, where a spinal deviation caused by so many years of stooping was corrected.

He had a lot of trouble adapting to the rules and life in the city, and he still has a difficult life today.