The "State Of Nature", An "Idiot", And "Tragic Story Bingo": The Changing Face Of Feral Children

Since almost the dawn of civilization itself, humanity has been fascinated by those who live outside of it. We’ve told each other tales of Enkidu, the wild man who must slowly be introduced to the modern world of ancient Mesopotamia; of Romulus and Remus, the children suckled by a she-wolf, who, legend has it, would grow up to found a great and sprawling Empire; of Tarzan, the man taken from Victorian society and brought up by apes in the jungles of Africa; and of Mowgli, the child raised by wolves in the forests of central India.

In reality, though, humans brought up by animals are often stories of tragedy, not adventure. “A real case of a feral child […] is a vulnerable, abandoned survivor,” Mary-Ann Ochota, an anthropologist who researched and presented the 2011 documentary Feral Children, wrote in 2017. “It’s like tragic-story bingo.”

A wild history

Myths and legends of Ye Olde Tymes notwithstanding, the earliest substantial descriptions of “wild” or “feral” children come from the 1600s: “there are descriptions of a wolf boy in Germany,” writes Michelle Jarman, Associate Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Wyoming’s Institute for Disabilities, “and in 1644, the first story appears in English of John of Liège, a boy lost by his parents in the woods who took on animal-like behaviors to survive on his own for years.” 

Other countries had their own reports of wild children, too: in Lithuania, a boy was found living among bears; in Ireland, a boy was apparently raised by sheep. There were reports in Germany of a boy growing up among cattle. Poland, once again, deserves a special mention for weirdness here, having apparently had an international reputation at the time for children being raised by bears. 

These children were viewed with interest, mostly, along with some concern for the state of their immortal souls – this was the 17th century, after all. Stories were told of how their senses were sharpened by their life in the wild; how they would struggle to stand up, and would sometimes never learn to speak human languages at all. They were, it seems, viewed as somehow fully adopted by these animal species – and while not always pitied, they nevertheless often lost some of their perceived humanity in the process.

With the dawn of the scientific enlightenment, this vague uneasiness morphed into something which modern scholars term “problematic as hell”. Look up 18th century texts, and you can find humanity “scientifically” split into six distinct species: Homo americanus, Homo europaeus, Homo asiaticus, Homo afer – that is, American, European, Asian, and African; but then Homo monstrosus – the so-called “monstrous” people, including giants, people with dwarfism, and girls who tight-laced their corsets(?); and finally Homo ferens – the “wild” people. 

Becoming human

Obviously, that was all nonsense: there is one species of human, and “race” is a made-up concept with no basis in biology or genetics. Similarly, people with physical differences or disabilities are just that: people; and “wild” children or adults are equally the exact same as you or us, minus a few important social interventions. 

Exactly what those particular interventions are, and why and how they affect human development, were all questions that fascinated the scientists and philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Feral children were thought to be variously soulless animals, unable to properly perceive the world around them, or somehow the purest form of human possible, unencumbered by the corruption of modern society. 

For Victor, the so-called “wild boy of Aveyron”, found in France in 1800, we can see both these views play out at once: to French physician Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, he was “a living artifact,” Jarman notes; “an atavistic body on which to test the notion […] that human knowledge was constructed rather than inborn”; to rival physician Philippe Pinel, he was a mere “idiot”.

Who was correct? At the time, it seemed Pinel had it right: “After several years of training […] Victor was still unable to use language,” Jarman explains – “a failure that further solidified an understanding of feral children as mentally ‘infantile’ and ‘inferior.’”

But was that totally fair? Maybe not. According to Itard’s own notes, Victor learned his numbers, colors, shapes; he could anticipate the needs of others, and seemed to possess a sense of “justice”; he could even write a few simple French nouns and verbs. The only thing he couldn’t learn was how to speak out loud – but Itard apparently never tried to expand on the gestural communication he was able to use. 

Had he done so, perhaps Victor might have led a relatively normal life. It’s been known: Marina Chapman, for example, claims to have been raised by capuchin monkeys for five years, and lacked human language when she was “rescued” aged 10 – but she would eventually be able to speak not one but two languages; she had a normal career and family, and even wrote a best-selling book about her time in the jungle. 

Wild child

Why, then, do feral children suffer so much when it comes to learning human skills? Is it truly, as Pinel claimed, that they’re congenitally incapable of it, or is there some other, more rational reason?

Well, the answer, most likely, is the latter – though, as uncomfortable as it is to admit, we probably can’t fully discount the former. “It’s of course possible some of these children ended up in the strange ‘wild’ situation because they were showing some level of abnormality or developmental delay in the first place,” Ochota pointed out. “It’s a difficult idea, but raising dysfunctional or disabled children is, to some extent, a modern luxury.”

It’s impossible to know whether any given case concerns a child who would otherwise be “typical”, had they not ended up in the wild, or whether their abandonment came as a result of their needing extra help that couldn’t be given – but one thing is for sure: once left to the mercy of nature, their luck was already all but out.

“Feral children may exhibit the usual range of biological developmental potential, but [they] fail to develop normal human communication skills as a result of growing up in social isolation without proper models,” explained neuroscientist Heather Stewart. “Such skills are dependent upon continuous hearing, observation, mimicking and reinforcement to develop properly.” 

“Depending on the age at which they are removed from human contact and the age at which they are retrieved, feral children may not ever be able to develop normal communication patterns,” she added, “because of the window in early childhood when the nervous system is primed for acquiring language and communication skills.”

The human brain, and children’s brains especially, are remarkably plastic – but there are certain skills, and language acquisition is one, for which many scientists think there’s a “critical window” for development. Basically, the hypothesis goes, if you make it past the first few years of life without being exposed to human language, it’s going to be incredibly hard, if not impossible, to pick it up at a later age.

Even if a feral child is lucky enough to survive at all, then, after fate or ill-favor has taken them into the wilderness, the upshot is this: that there will likely always be a part of them which is somehow removed from human life. 

“Humans are naturally social,” Ochota wrote. “In order to grow up normal, we need other people to care for us, to communicate with us, to keep us safe.” 

“A child surviving without interaction, language or love is a child that will be damaged by an unnatural life,” she added. “Humans are not designed to live like that.”