Random Feral Children Raised by Actual Animals (10 items)

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  (#1) Living With Monkeys Was The Easiest Part Of Marina Chapman’s Life

  In 1959, Marina Chapman was taken from her rural Colombian home and driven into the jungle. There, she was abandoned for apparently no reason. After hours of wandering and weeping, she managed to stumble upon a group of what are thought to be capuchin monkeys. Chapman followed the clan for days, learning to scavenge like they did, and surviving thanks to their help. At one point, one of the elder members of the family even helped save Chapman’s life when she got a foodborne illness.

  Over time, Chapman began to miss human contact. Unfortunately, the first people she chose to reveal herself to sold her to a brothel. It was years before she was able to escape into the city streets by working as a domestic servant in people’s homes. Fortunately, these days Chapman is at the head of an extensive family of her own, having put the horrors of her life behind her.

  To this day, Chapman says that she owes her life to the little family of monkeys that helped keep her alive.
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  (#8) Ivan Mishukov Escaped Rescue Three Times In Order To Be With His Pack

  The mid-1990s were a pretty bleak time in Russia. The country was suffering turbulent political instability and a crippling economic depression. One of the human victims of these often generalized terms was Ivan Mishukov. In 1996, four-year-old Ivan ran away from an alcoholic father and took refuge in the city streets.

  An avid animal lover, the young boy would spend his days begging for food on the Moscow streets before sharing his spoils with a pack of local dogs. In turn, the pack adopted the young boy, helping him to stave off the crushing Moscow winter, which can sometimes get colder than ten degrees below zero. For two years, Ivan lived with his pack, somehow thriving on the city’s streets. Every time authorities would come to collect him, Ivan’s pack would drive the people away. It took a bribe of steak to lure the dogs away long enough to rescue young Ivan.

  Due to the fact that he was in human custody for the first four years of his life, Ivan was able to re-adapt to society with relative ease.
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  (#9) Though He Never Left The City, One Russian Child Can Only Communicate With Birds

  An anonymous seven-year-old Russian boy wasn't exactly abandoned by his mother, a 31-year-old Russian woman, but his life may have gone a little smoother had he been. Before he was discovered in 2008, the young man had been raised entirely as a bird.

  According to Russian newspaper Pravda, the boy’s mother was infatuated with birds. She had a large collection of domestic birds and regularly fed wild birds, as well. As her son grew, she refused to speak to him or let him out of the apartment. Instead, she treated him just like one of her birds. As a result, when he was found by authorities at age seven, he was only able to communicate in bird chirps. 

  The boy was taken from his mother’s care and sent to live in a psychological care facility.
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  (#2) Though Found And ‘Rehabilitated,’ Oxana Malaya Still Has More In Common With Animals

  In 1986, three-year-old Ukrainian Oxana Malaya was left outside during a snowstorm by a pair of alcoholic parents. Young Oxana managed to walk into a nearby hovel where she was taken in by a pack of dogs. For some reason, her parents never actually went to retrieve their daughter, and the young girl was raised by the domestic canines for the next five years, until a neighbor reported the situation to authorities.

  These days, the 33-year-old works with cows on a farm at the mental facility where she resides. Though she’s become somewhat comfortable with people, telling jokes and speaking regularly, she reportedly still favors the company of creatures to people.
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  (#4) John Ssebunya Survived A Civil War In A Ugandan Jungle Thanks To Some Monkeys

  In the mid-1980s, as Uganda was in the throes of a violent civil war, young John Ssebunya was a mere toddler of two. One night, in a fit of rage, John’s father killed his mother, prompting the terrified child to flee into the jungle. There he stayed for the next year, surviving only thanks to the benevolence of a group of monkeys.

  A few days into his feral life, Ssebunya was approached by a small family of monkeys who offered him roots, nuts, sweet potatoes, and cassava. Ssebunya also learned his behavior from the monkeys (for example, as a boy, he’d rarely meet people’s eyes). Fortunately, though, John survived and was raised by a new family. And though he’s happy where he is, John explains that he feels fortunate to have been found by the group of monkeys who would become his short-lived family.

  “I am grateful, yes, I am,” he says. “Because... not because of love from them, from the monkeys. But because what they did made it possible for me to be loved by other people, by humans.”
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  (#6) The Study Of Victor, The Wild Boy Of Aveyron, Impacted The Future Of Linguistics

  In 1797, 12-year-old Victor was found wandering the wilderness of France. He was captured twice over the next year, but he escaped quickly both times. In 1800, the 15-year-old emerged from the woods of his own accord.

  Because schools for the deaf tended to specialize in helping people speak, the mute teenager was sent to a facility for deaf people. There, he was taken into the care of Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who began to work with the boy. Unfortunately, Victor proved nearly incapable of learning to speak (he only ever learned two words). Itard’s studies were the first indication that the human brain has a natural cutoff in which the fundamentals of language needed to be imprinted.

  Oh, also, a monk once took Victor out in the snow when the kid was bare-assed, apparently for reasons of scientific inquiry (suuuuuuuuure.) Surprisingly, though, Victor loved it, running and jumping through the snow happily.

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