Wolf girl, dog girl, chicken boy. These children were raised by animals. Among them is a child from Ukraine. Why did it happen? Read in our article
All of us in childhood read "Mowgli" and watched a film about Tarzan. From the pages of the book and from TV screens, the story of a child who was adopted and raised by a flock of wild animals sounds idyllic. In fact, such stories happen in real life, and believe me, they are very far from the writer's fantasies. Children raised by animals look creepy, and the situations in which they find themselves are simply freezing blood.
Such babies are called feral or feral. Several feral children are found in the world every year - and not only in forests, but also in cities, in socially disadvantaged families. Such babies grow up in garbage dumps, in abandoned apartments or sheds with inadequate parents - alcoholics, drug addicts or people with mental disorders. Social isolation leads to the fact that children completely lose their human appearance and imitate animals. And unfortunately, it is far from always possible to rehabilitate them.
Photographer Julia Fullerton Batten drew attention to the problem of feral children. Her photo project "Wild Children" is based on real stories. Each of these pictures is a fragment of a real, eerie and forever broken life.
Wolf girl from mexico
Marina Chapman lived for five years in the jungle among monkeys / photo Julia Fullerton-Batten
Julia Fullerton Batten learned about this story from the newspapers, so she cannot vouch for its accuracy. After all, it happened quite a long time ago, in 1845. Then the inhabitants of the Mexican city of San Felipe saw for the first time in a pack of wolves a little girl who ran on all fours along with other animals and took the same part in the hunt. She attacked goats and tore them with her teeth: several times people saw her near a stream eating dead prey. They called her Lobo and tried to catch her several times. Once it succeeded, but it did not work to adapt the girl to the human environment. She had to be kept on a leash, as Lobo was trying to escape all the time. She ran on all fours, tore off her clothes and howled constantly. A few days later, Lobo gnawed through the rope and fled into the forest. After that, no one saw her again.
Dog girl from Ukraine
Oksana Malaya lived in a dog pack from the age of three / photo Julia Fullerton-Batten
This terrible story happened in Ukraine, and not so long ago. In 1992, the whole country was shocked by the story of eight-year-old Oksana Malaya from the Kherson region. The girl was found in an abandoned barn next to the dog. She did not know how to speak, preferred to walk on all fours, growled at people and tried to bite them. The child's parents were complete alcoholics: the mother gave birth to children and, in fact, threw them out into the street. At the age of three, Oksana also found herself outside the door: to keep warm, she crawled into the doghouse. From that moment on, the baby began to live with the dog Nayda and a pack of other dogs, at night she climbed through the trash heaps and ate scraps with them, and slept in the barn during the day. Only five years later, social services paid attention to the strange child and took her to an orphanage. From there she ran away several times to the local dogs. It was not possible to restore the girl's mental health to the end: now she lives at a neuropsychiatric boarding school in the village of Baraboy, Odessa region.
Bird boy from Russia
Vanya Yudin's interlocutors for eight years were only birds / photo Julia Fullerton-Batten
Vanya Yudin from Volgograd did not suffer from parental abuse. Parents, or rather my mother, did not treat him at all. Immediately after giving birth, her husband left her: shocked, the woman completely withdrew into herself and stopped paying attention to the child. She did not take him outside, did not take him to the doctors, Vanya did not go to kindergarten or school. He spent all the time in a locked apartment with the birds, which, unlike the child, the woman loved very much. There was no free space in her house, everything was filled with cages. The child grew up imitating pets. At the age of 8, when he was finally found and taken away by the guardianship authorities, he did not know a single human word, but he knew how to tweet and chirp, flapped his arms like wings and "pecked" food from a plate.
Monkey girl from Colombia
The girl Lobo from Mexico could not be tamed / photo Julia Fullerton-Batten
One of the few stories of feral children with a happy ending. Marina Chapman was kidnapped when she was a young child and played on the street with other children. For unknown reasons, the kidnappers left the girl in the Colombian jungle. The baby nailed to a flock of Capuchin monkeys: in order to survive, she had to learn to climb trees, sleep on branches, get her own food and communicate in the monkey language. The Capuchins took her as their own: at first they fed the child, looked for lice from her and warmed her with their warmth. Marina spent almost 5 years in the flock until she was caught by poachers. The monkey girl was sold into a brothel, but she was still too young to be involved in prostitution. She worked there as a servant for several years, and then ran away. Many years later, Marina Chapman wrote her autobiography The Girl Without a Name, in which she spoke about life among monkeys.
Chicken Boy from Fiji
Vanya Yudin is not the only child raised by birds. In 1980, a child was found in the Republic of Fiji, who spent his whole life in a chicken coop. Sujit Kumar was left without parents at an early age - his father was killed, and his mother decided to commit suicide. Of the relatives of Sujit, only his old grandfather remained, who did not know how to handle the child at all. For disobedience, he often locked the baby in the chicken coop, and then decided to leave him there for good. Until the age of 8, Sujit lived with chickens and roosters and did not see a single human face. Only twice a day did my grandfather come to feed him with the birds. When the child was found, he squatted, flapped his wings, clucked and tried to crow. He was taken under guardianship in a nursing home, but for a long time they did not know how to rehabilitate. The boy turned out to be violent and attacked people. He spent many years tied to a bed, until one of the employees of the institution managed to find an approach to him. She is now caring for him, but Sujit has not been socialized.
