Do feral children exist

Answer 1

Yes, there is a plathora of records about children that have been found to have lacked human contact, often due to one of two conditions. Many of these children have been discovered living in the wild, presumably raised by animals due to exhibiting animalistic behavior. Others have been rescued from years of isolated confinement. These cases have been recorded from Ancient Egypt up to the twenty-first century. Feral children hold an acute significance in psychological studies, for their behaviors reveal mannerisms of the undomesticated human brain & pose the question of whether humans are a product of genetics or environment. For this reason, they are often referred to as "forbidden experiments."

Feral children have long fascinated civilization & have inspired literature, such as the legend of Romulus & Remus, the wolf-raised feral twins who supposebly founded Rome. A more recent work is "The Jungle Book," by Rudyard Kipling, a fictional story about a feral child raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The term "Mowgli Syndrome," sometimes used to describe the condition of a feral child, derives from the child's name.

Out of dozens of cases, a few cases are: Kasper Hauser, a German teenage boy who could barely speak when found, although he could write his name. He learned enough vocabulary to inform his caretakers of his dubious past. From what he told, he spent his childhood confined in a small cage-like setting that forced him to constantly sit with his back against the wall & his legs set forward. He was given bread & water every morning, provided a chamber pot to relieve himself, & some wooden toy horses to play with, but he never saw the face of his confiner until the day he began to teach Kasper how to read & write. After Kasper learned, he was turned out, alone & defenseless, into Nuremburg, carrying a letter that informed whoever happened to find him that "he [Kasper] wishes to serve his King in the Army...I've never let him take a foot out of the house. He cannot & will not tell you where he came from. If you do not keep him, strike him or hang him." However, he was taken into a tower instead, where many citizens of the town would visit him during his rehabilitation. He quickly became a celebrity, known from Germany to England. Tragically, his confiner kidnapped him a few years later & took him out into the forest & slit his throat. The legend behind Kasper's life was that he was the son of the Grand Duke Karl & the rightful heir to the Throne of Barin, but was smuggled away by his father's evil stepmother so that her own biological son would inherit the throne after Karl's death. Kasper's royal lineage was scientifically confirmed in 1996 through DNA testing in Birmingham, England, proposing this legend true. Films were conducted about his life, including an opera entitled, "Kasper Hauser."

Victor de Aveyron, a 12-year-old feral boy discovered roaming around the outskirts of the city of Aveyron. He was captured & examined, where it was discovered that he could not speak & showed animalisitic bahavior, as if he were raised by wolves. He couldn't distinguish between heat & cold & refused to eat cooked food, a sign of no domestication. A scar on his neck hinted that someone probably took him out Into the Woods one night when he was an infant in order to do away with him, but didn't quite cut his throat deep enough to kill the boy. Victor was moved to Paris under the care of Monsieur Jean-Marc-Gaspert Itard, an instructor located at a school for deaf boys who took on the task of civilizing Victor. Itard used cut-out iron letters to teach Victor the alphabet, & he was soon able to spell "lait", French for "milk," which he grew very fond of. Throughout his life, he only became able to say "lait" and "a Dieu", meaning "Oh God," although he did learn to set a table & use a glass properly. Itard eventually became frustrated with Victor's stagnant progress & put him under the care of a housekeeper, whom he lived with until he died at age 40. The movie "L'enfaunt sauvage," depicts Victor's life under the study of Itard. It came out in November 1970, a week after the shocking discovery of Genie.

On November 4, 1970 Genie (her pseudonym provided for the protection of privacy) was discovered by a social worker accompanying her mother at the welfare offices in Temple City, California, who was seeking benefits for the blind. She had a strange gait, & held her hands up by her chest as if they were placed on an imaginary table. She had difficulty focusing her eyes beyond 12 feet, & she still wore diapers. The social worker guessed that Genie was an autistic 7-year-old, & notified her supervisor when she discovered that the child was actually 13. Authorities were sent to the family home for investigations. It was discovered that Genie's father deemed her retarded, & therefore locked her in a backroom in the house, where she spent 12 years strapped to a potty chair by day & straitjacketed in a crib with an iron lid by night. The only contact she had was with her deranged father, who barked at her & beat her with a 2-by-4 every time she vocalized. Her diet consisted of warm cereal with honey & milk spoon-fed to her by her father. He would occassionally slice a hard-boiled egg into her cereal. To limit contact with Genie, he would cram the food into her mouth all at once, & he smeared it in her face if she were to choke it back out. Occassionally, she was allowed to play with two rubber raincoats, old TV Guide catalogs, a cottage cheese cannister, & empty spools of thread. Her room was austere, consisting only of her crib, her chair, & a chest of drawers. Her father forbade her mother or older brother to have any contact with her, & insisted that she was going to die before her thirteenth birthday. Seeing that she didn't, her mother rescued her from her prison & left her abusive husband. Genie was placed under the care of Children's Hospital in Los Angeles to begin her rehabilitation. Genie could only recognize a total of 20 words, & the only phrases she could mutter were "stop it" & "no more." A team of psychologists were assigned to her case, & she showed quantum progress, but lost funding after a few years. The case was eventually abandoned, & Genie was placed under multiple foster homes, where she was abused in one of them for vomiting on the carpet. Genie is 53 & living in a classified foster home for disabled adults in Southern California. "Mockingbird Don't Sing," a 2002 independent film, depicts her life.