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Feral Children

gncxx said:
I read in the newspaper today that the Cambodian girl desperately wants to go back to the jungle because she hates her new life in civilisation. Sad story.

Why can't they let the poor thing go back to where she feels comfortable?
Its typical of us humans to sometimes take our values too far, believeing that she will be better off in crappy flowery dresses, shuffling about in a mental institution...
 
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Psychologist to see 'jungle-girl'

The woman has tried to escape from the family she is living with
A Spanish psychologist is travelling to Cambodia's remote north-east to assess a woman who some people believe has been living in the jungle for 19 years.
Hector Rifa, of Psychologists without Borders, said he wanted to ensure she was well and getting enough support.

The woman was reportedly discovered ten days ago, naked and scavenging for food in the forests of Rattanakiri province. A family claims she is their daughter, Rochom P'ngieng, who went missing when she was eight.

They say they identified her from a scar on her arm.

But others are sceptical, saying she could be somebody with mental problems, or have gone missing more recently.

'Normal situation'

The woman, who appears unable to speak any intelligible language, is reported to have tried to run away several times as locals and journalists have descended on the village to look at her.

Mr Rifa, of Spain's Oviedo University, has been working with Cambodia's hill tribes on issues of health promotion for the last four years.


The family is at the centre of huge attention over the case

He said he would try to evaluate the woman and "to try and understand her behaviour in relation to her family and her community".

He said her behaviour was not unusual for someone who had undergone an extreme change in her circumstances.

"I think it's very normal - you leave the office for one month, and when you get back you find it a little strange," he told the AFP news agency.

"Imagine you are (away) for 18 years and you come back to that office again.. it is a very normal situation to be afraid."

Two local human rights groups expressed concern about the woman's physical and psychological welfare on Monday.

Village policeman Sal Lou is certain the woman is the daughter he lost when she disappeared while tending buffalo in 1988.



He has said he will have DNA tests taken to prove she is his daughter.

He described how she was naked and "walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey" when he first saw her. "She was shaking and picking up grains of rice from the ground to eat," he added.

He says she is unable to communicate and is able only to make animal noises.

But some are beginning to doubt Sal Lou's story.

One onlooker who travelled to see her told the AFP: "She looks normal like us".





http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6289741.stm
 
I was thinking that from the pictures she looks incredibly ordinary. I'm inclined to think she might just be an autistic or otherwise mentally disabled woman, or possibly even someone acting...
 
First pictures of the 'bird boy' who was raised as a pet and can only communicate by chirping
Last updated at 15:40pm on 29th February 2008

A seven-year-old boy who can only communicate by chirping after his mother raised him as a pet bird has been rescued by Russian care-workers.

Reports in Russian media claim the child, suffering from "Mowgli syndrome", was found in a tiny two-room apartment that appeared to double as an aviary, filled with cages containing dozens of birds, bird feed and bird droppings.

Social worker Galina Volskaya, who helped rescue the "bird-boy" from his home in Kirovsky, Volgograd, told Russian newspaper Pravda that he was treated like another pet by his 31-year-old mother.

Because she never spoke to him, Ms Volskaya explained, the boy's only communication was with the birds he was surrounded by.

"When you start talking to him," she said, "he chirps."

Russian authorities say the child was not physically harmed but is suffering from "Mowgli syndrome", named after the Jungle Book character raised by wild animals, and cannot engage in any normal human communication.

Pravda reported: "(His mother) had her own domestic birds and fed wild ones. (She) neither beat him nor left him without food. She just never talked to him. It was all the birds that communicated with the boy and taught him birds' language.

"He just chirps and when realising that he is not understood, starts to wave hands in the way birds winnow wings."

The boy is temporarily living in an asylum, but soon will be transferred to a centre of psychological care, according to reports.

His mother signed an abdication form to release him into care after he was discovered last week.

Though admittedly unusual, the case is not without precedent.

In February 2006, social workers took three weeks to catch a four-year-old "wolf-boy" discovered living on the streets with a pack of stray dogs and cats in the Stavropol region of southern Russia. Arthur Zverev barked and ran on all fours.

And in January 2007, a Cambodian woman named Rochom P'ngieng was found wandering naked in the jungle, unable to speak after living among animals since she disappeared from home aged eight.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1811
 
Real-life Mowgli kept alive by cats
A one-year-old boy has been found living rough on the streets, apparently being kept alive by cats.

By Chris Hastings
Last Updated: 8:47AM GMT 20 Dec 2008

The boy, whose ordeal mirrors that of the character Mowgli from Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book, was discovered by police in Misiones, in Argentina, surrounded by eight wild cats.

Doctors believe the animals snuggled up with him during freezing nights which would otherwise have killed him.

The boy was seen eating scraps foraged by the animals while they licked him, it has been claimed.

Policewoman Alicia Lorena Lindgvist discovered the child by a canal in the Christ King district of the city.

She said: "I was walking and noticed a gang of cats sitting very close together. It is unusual to see so many like that so I went for a closer look and that's where I saw him. The boy was lying at the bottom of a gutter. There were all these cats on top of him licking him because he was really dirty.

"When I walked over they became really protective and spat at me. They were keeping the boy warm while he slept."

The officer, who noticed scraps of food near the boy, added: "The cats knew he was fragile and needed protecting."

Police have found the boy's father who is homeless and said he had lost the boy several days ago while out collecting cardboard to sell. He told officers cats had always been protective of his son.

A spokesman for Thames Valley Animal Welfare, which deals with feral cats and strays in Berkshire, said: "They would have viewed the baby like a big hot water bottle. Cats will cuddle up to anything to keep warm, even dogs.

He added: "In our experience of cat colonies when a mother has a litter, all the other cats will go and fetch food. The baby could have been feeding off the scraps they brought. Cats in Argentina stay in large packs to survive - much more than cats over here."

In the Jungle Book, Mowgli is raised in the Indian Jungle by wolves.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -cats.html
 
Argentine view of cats: "The cats knew he was fragile and needed protecting."

Berkshire view of cats: "They would have viewed the baby like a big hot water bottle. Cats will cuddle up to anything to keep warm, even dogs." :?
 
Jungle woman Rochom P'ngieng wants to return to the wild
A Cambodian woman who spent 18 years living in a forest after going missing as a child has struggled to reintegrate in village life and wants to return to the wild.
By Ian MacKinnon in Bangkok
Published: 5:24PM GMT 30 Oct 2009

Rochom P'ngieng, dubbed "jungle woman" when she emerged in Feb 2007, has still has not learnt to speak and refuses to wear clothes.

Her father said she had been admitted to hospital after refusing to eat for a month and had made several attempts to return to the forest.

Sal Lou said: "Her condition looks worse than the time we brought her from the jungle. She always wants to take off her clothes and crawl back to the jungle.

"She has refused to eat rice for about one month. She is skinny now... She still cannot speak. She acts totally like a monkey. Last night, she took off her clothes, and went to hide in the bathroom."

Rochom P'ngieng disappeared in 1989 when she was eight years old while herding water buffalo in the province of Ratanakkiri bordering Vietnam, north-east of the capital, Phnom Penh.

Her parents had long given up hope of ever seeing her. But in 2007, she emerged from the jungle naked and dirty, hunched over like a monkey, and was caught trying to steal by a farmer.

She was said to have been scavenging food in the forest and could utter only unintelligible words. Sal Lou described the sounds she made simply as "animal noises".

The drama of her disappearance and unlikely reappearance gripped Cambodians who described her as "half animal girl" and "jungle woman", though there were also many questions raised about her identity and whether she could really have survived in the jungle.

But Sal Lou, a village policeman, embraced Rochom P'ngieng as he long-lost daughter after identifying her by a facial scar.

However, in spite of the family's best efforts, the woman has had great difficulty settling in after her years in the jungle.

Sal Lou said that she was admitted to Ratanakkiri's provincial hospital last Monday, but he had removed her because she was unsettled and the medical staff had difficulty preventing her running away.

"We have to hold her hand all the time (at the hospital). Otherwise she would take her clothes off and run away," he said. She has become so difficult that he wants a charity to take her into care.

At the hospital Dr Hing Phan Sokunthea said Sal Lou took her away against the wishes of medical staff. "We wanted to monitor her situation more, but we don't know what to do because the father already took her out of hospital."

The jungles of Ratanakkiri – some of the most isolated and wild in Cambodia – are known to have held hidden groups of hill tribes in the past.

In 2004, four hill tribe families emerged from the dense forest where they had fled in 1979 after the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, which they supported.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -wild.html
 
Cambodian 'jungle woman' flees back to wild
Cambodia's "jungle woman", who spent 18 years living in a dense forest, has fled back to the wild after struggling to adapt to society.
By Barney Henderson in Kuala Lumpur
Published: 10:00PM BST 28 May 2010

Rochom P'ngieng, now 29-years-old, first disappeared into thick hilly jungle in 1989 when she was a little girl. She was "discovered" in early 2007 and reunited with her family.

However, attempts to reintegrate her have failed. She has not learnt either of the local languages, Khmer or Phnang, prefers to crawl rather than walk, refuses to wear clothes and has made several attempts to return to the forest where she grew up.

Her father, Sal Lou, a policeman, said that she had been making progress recently, but disappeared on Tuesday evening. "She took off her clothes and ran away from the house without saying a word to any of our family members," Mr Lou said.

"Even the day before she fled the house, she still helped the family pick vegetables. She must have gone back to the forest and we still cannot find her." The dramatic reappearance and attempted reintegration of the "jungle girl" has gripped Cambodia, where she is also known as the "half-animal girl" because of her hunched appearance and the fact she makes animal noises rather than speaking.

Mr Lou blames his daughter's second disappearance on "forest spirits". In a society shrouded in mystic beliefs, he has also enlisted a fortune teller to help with the search. He is saving up for an offering of one wild ox, one pig, one chicken and four jugs of wine, which, the mystic assures him, will secure his daughter's return.

A separate theory was offered by local rights group, Ad hoc, which believes that the woman struggled to readapt to society and suffers from stress. "She must have experienced traumatic events in the jungle that have affected her ability to speak," said Penn Bunna.

Rochom first disappeared in 1989 while herding water buffalo with her sister in the province of Ratanakkiri, 400 miles north-east of Phnom Penh.

Her sister has never been found, but Rochom emerged from the jungle, filthy, naked, scared and "looking like a monkey" in February 2007.

She was caught stealing food from a farmer's lunch box after a stakeout.

Locals reported sightings of her with a naked man carrying a sword, who they believe to be a jungle spirit.

Her parents, who had long given up hope of seeing their daughters again, identified her from a scar on her arm and welcomed her back into the family.

However, Mr Lou refused a DNA test. A Cambodian non-governmental organisation believes that it is impossible that a girl of eight could survive in the jungle and that she was actually brought up in captivity.

Neighbours and local authorities are helping the family with the search, but the jungles of Ratanakkiri are among Cambodia's wildest and most isolated.

In November 2004, 34 people from a pro-Khmer Rouge tribe emerged from the jungle where they had been hiding since the fall of the regime in 1979.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -wild.html
 
Real-life Mowgli kept alive by cats
A one-year-old boy has been found living rough on the streets, apparently being kept alive by cats.
By Chris Hastings
8:46AM GMT 20 Dec 2008

The boy, whose ordeal mirrors that of the character Mowgli from Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book, was discovered by police in Misiones, in Argentina, surrounded by eight wild cats.
Doctors believe the animals snuggled up with him during freezing nights which would otherwise have killed him.
The boy was seen eating scraps foraged by the animals while they licked him, it has been claimed.

Policewoman Alicia Lorena Lindgvist discovered the child by a canal in the Christ King district of the city.
She said: "I was walking and noticed a gang of cats sitting very close together. It is unusual to see so many like that so I went for a closer look and that's where I saw him. The boy was lying at the bottom of a gutter. There were all these cats on top of him licking him because he was really dirty.
"When I walked over they became really protective and spat at me. They were keeping the boy warm while he slept."
The officer, who noticed scraps of food near the boy, added: "The cats knew he was fragile and needed protecting."

Police have found the boy's father who is homeless and said he had lost the boy several days ago while out collecting cardboard to sell. He told officers cats had always been protective of his son.

A spokesman for Thames Valley Animal Welfare, which deals with feral cats and strays in Berkshire, said: "They would have viewed the baby like a big hot water bottle. Cats will cuddle up to anything to keep warm, even dogs.
He added: "In our experience of cat colonies when a mother has a litter, all the other cats will go and fetch food. The baby could have been feeding off the scraps they brought. Cats in Argentina stay in large packs to survive - much more than cats over here."

In the Jungle Book, Mowgli is raised in the Indian Jungle by wolves.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -cats.html
 
A one-year-old boy has been found living rough on the streets, apparently being kept alive by cats.

This story appears identical to the one you posted in December 2008? The Telegraph seems a bit behind the times...
 
I was just about to make my evil-cats response, very like the one I had completely forgotten from 2008! :spinning
 
Family of woman who was 'raised by monkeys' speak out
Relatives of Marina Chapman, the woman who says she was raised by monkeys for five years in the Colombian jungle, have spoken to the Telegraph about her remarkable story.
By Julian Simmonds and Philip Sherwell, in Cúcuta, Colombia
7:00AM GMT 28 Oct 2012

Ms Chapman's forthcoming book claims she learnt to catch birds and rabbits with her bare hands after being abandoned in the jungle by kidnappers.

The Tarzan-like episode was brought to an end when she was discovered by hunters, but by her ordeal continued when she was sold to a brothel in the city of Cucuta and groomed for prostitution.
She was eventually found living on the streets and was taken in by a family who adopted her.

Her cousin, Carlos Velasquez, described how she was believed to have survived amongst the animals for so long.
"Apparently she was very little and she saw the monkeys eating food in the middle of the jungle. In order to survive she would imitate, or eat what they ate," he said.

An expert at the state Environment Agency in Colombia explained how it might be possible for a human to survive in these conditions.
Antonio Ramirez said: "The social behaviour of the monkeys is such that they can embrace the human as long as it doesn't show any aggression."

Ms Chapman and her family have now decided to tell her story to help highlight the horrors of human trafficking in South America.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraphtv/ ... k-out.html
 
More about Marina Chapman, who claims to have been raised by monkeys, in Colombia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/apr/13/woman-monkeys-colombia-video

The woman who claims she was raised by monkeys - video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/apr/13/woman-monkeys-colombia-video

Marina Chapman claims to have lived in the Colombian jungle with monkeys for about five years. She talks to Simon Hattenstone about her escape from the jungle, living on Colombia's streets and moving to Bradford. Chapman has written a book about her life, called The Girl with No Name

The Guardian. Simon Hattenstone, David Levene, Leah Green. Length: 5min 29sec. 13 April 2013
 
8 Year old girl found living with monkeys and walking on all fours in remote nature reserve

The youngster, who reportedly walks on all fours and screeches to communicate was found wandering through a remote nature reserve in Bahraich, northern India.

Sub-inspector Suresh Yadav, from Uttar Pradesh Police service, was on a routine patrol when he spotted the girl happily sitting among the apes at Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary, close to the border with Nepal.

He said when he tried to rescue her the apes screeched at him and so did the girl

Police are still trying to find out where the girl comes from and how long she has been in the wild after the discovery two months ago.

She is being looked after in hospital, where doctors say she remains to be frightened of humans and is prone to bouts of anger and violence.

Although she has shown some improvement and is being taught to walk on two legs, she continues to walk on all fours, it has been reported.
 
I'm of the belief that the only way such 'wild children' stand any chance of being integrated into society is gradually. Taking them from what they've known for years, sometimes all their lives, and putting them into something utterly alien can only ever be traumatic, especially if it's abrupt, and thus, almost inevitably, counter-productive.

A course of careful trust-building and acclimatisation might work, even if only to provide them with some measure of support while letting them remain mostly self-sufficient. Adjacent to that, imagine what you could learn, about us, about our fellow animals, and most of all, how we can connect and co-exist.

Or am I letting my romantic side get a little carried away?
 
It is very fascinating. Some amazingly patronising comments from the anthropologist here.

“When Pantoja says the fox laughed at him, or that he had to tell off the snake, he gives us a version of the true reality, what he believes happened – or how, at least, he explained the reality to himself,” Janer told me. “Marcos’s mind was desperate for social acceptance,” he told me, “so instead of understanding the animals’ presence as incentivised by the food, he thought they were trying to make friends.”

If the animals were incentivised by food there is an amazing honesty in this which just isn't found in humans and which he found to his cost when he was forced back into human life. The animals were probably more his friends than any human, however well-meaning.
 
A Spanish chap lived amongst wolves from the age 7 until 19. Now 72, he still hasn't fully reintegrated into society.

https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/03/28/inenglish/1522237746_629465.html

I'm of the belief that the only way such 'wild children' stand any chance of being integrated into society is gradually. Taking them from what they've known for years, sometimes all their lives, and putting them into something utterly alien can only ever be traumatic, especially if it's abrupt, and thus, almost inevitably, counter-productive.

This is quite interesting - it underlines that socialisation of children can impact the ability to get along in life in a permenant way.

One doesn't have to look far for human/human examples:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39055704

I suspect that once the pattern of behaviour is learned as a growing child, the effects will be almost permanent, 'hard-wired' if you like. It seem impossible to under-estimate the impact of and necessity for socialisation of children.

Those 'well meaning' folk who split siblings, run impersonal institutional care facilities and separate children from their families on the flimsiest self-justifying pretexts need a figurative smack around the head.
 
This feature article was once available on the now-defunct Fortean Times website. It's a broad and lengthy review of the feral children phenomenon from ancient times to the present. The full (longest; illustrated) version of the article can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine. It contains a lot of general information and many historical examples.

WILD THINGS
Stories of children rescued from the wilderness have for centuries inspired awe, fascination and disbelief. PAUL SIEVEKING reviews a phenomenon that helps to define the frontier between human and animal.

Some excerpts ...

Tales of children being adopted and nurtured by wolves, bears, monkeys, and other animals crop up with remarkable regularity. As the mediæval world gave way to the modern, the wodewose or wild man of the woods shifted from an archetype of chaos, insanity and heresy to one of natural harmony and enlightenment, culminating in Rousseau’s idea of the Noble Savage. But the wild man was both savage and sublime, an image of desire as well as punishment. Wild or feral children elicit both heart-rending pity for their abandonment and wonder for their survival against such terrible odds.

Ancient mythology has many stories of children nurtured by animals, but the first ‘true’ account of a feral child was recorded by the usually dependable Roman historian Procopius. ...

Many academics regarded the whole phenomenon of feral children with scepticism; they pointed out that most of the children never learnt to speak, while those that did could recall very little of their wild existence. Similarly, the circumstances of their discovery were by their nature anecdotal, taking place far from habitation and often depending on the testimony of a solitary witness. Dismissing testimony as superstition and folklore became commonplace in 19th century science, to the detriment of folk wisdom and forteana. ...

It’s true that some feral children, such as Dina Sanichar of Sekandra (1867), the Lucknow child (1954) and the first Ugandan monkey-child (1982) were mentally or physically handicapped. Many others, however, were not; and neither were they intentionally abandoned, but had escaped from abusive parents or were lost by accident or in the chaos of war – and surviving without human help required considerable native intelligence. ...

The first modern published account of ‘historical’ as opposed to mythological feral children was a work by the medical writer Phillipus Camerius, published in Frankfurt in 1609 ...

FULL ARTICLE:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030206023931/http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/161_feralkids.shtml
 
This feature article was once available on the now-defunct Fortean Times website. It's a broad and lengthy review of the feral children phenomenon from ancient times to the present. The full (longest; illustrated) version of the article can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine. It contains a lot of general information and many historical examples.

WILD THINGS


Some excerpts ...



FULL ARTICLE:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030206023931/http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/161_feralkids.shtml
We live in Witham in Essex where all the bloody children are feral. The town constantly makes the local press with reports of the wild antics of the feral kids and on several occasions has made the red tops...one example of many in the link below

https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/5477246.witham-youths-stone-santa-again/
 
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