The Strange Lives of Wild Children
By: Jean Campbell
Tags: Child Psychology, Biography, Wolves, History, Animals

The Strange Lives of Wild Children

Photo credit: adobestock.com

A child’s capacity to imitate and learn to speak only lasts for a few short years. The stories of wild children Marcos Rodriguez, “Victor,” and John Ssebunya are fascinating windows into how we grow into human beings.

Feral children or “isolates” are rare but compelling. Most have escaped abuse, only to struggle to fit in to civilized society once the leave they forest or jungle behind.

Marcos Rodriguez, 1946 –

Raised by wolves

Mr. Rodriquez was born in crushing poverty in post-WWII Spain. At the time, it was not unusual for young boys to be sent away as shepherds. In Marcos’s case, his widowed father sold him into slavery.

He was six-years-old but adapted quickly under the guidance of an ancient shepherd who taught him to hunt rabbits and milk goats. The old man disappeared one day, however, not long after Marcos was put under his care. Marcos knew the basics of hunting, and how to make fire, but little else. He was living in a remote mountain region devoid of other people.

The boy had suffered abuse growing up, so he was relatively happy in the mountains despite the problems of finding enough to eat. He often went without shelter.

Marcos began observing the animals and saw what foods they ate. The boars dug for tubers; the birds picked berries. When he skinned a rabbit in the stream, its guts attracted fish. He was able to survive but was living a literal hand-to-mouth existence.

It was when he sought refuge during a rainstorm that his situation improved.

On this day, Marcos found a small, dry cave. He saw it was occupied by wolf cubs, but crawled inside to sleep beside them. When he awoke, a she-wolf had appeared. She bore her teeth and growled at him but tolerated his presence. Seeing he wasn’t a threat, she soon began bringing him meat.

Marcos reported his friendship with wolves was the key to his survival. He got along well with snakes and foxes, too, but disliked wild boars. As he grew, he learned to hunt larger game such as deer.

Years went by until one day someone spotted a dishevelled man (by now, Marcos had lived in the wilderness for 15 years) and called authorities. The police found and detained him, then escorted him back to his hometown to be reunited with his father. As before, the father showed no interest.

Marcos, 21, was left on his own in the streets of a town he hardly knew. A few kind people took pity on him; he lived in convents and was eventually adopted by a retired policeman.

The anthropologist Gabriel Janer Manila interviewed Marcos’s first caretaker (a local curator) and the policemen. Both remarked that Marcos was unable to adapt to social norms. The young man seemed unfazed by cold weather and carried himself with an odd, bow-legged gait — more like a monkey than a human.

The police officer moved Marcos into his family’s home. He made an effort to socialize the boy, but Marcos never fit in. He had trouble speaking, although he understood everything that was being said.

His years in the mountains had taught him to use grunts and howls to communicate. Marcos said, “I would try to run back to the mountains whenever I could. I didn’t feel comfortable among humans.”

Marcos Rodriguez. Photo courtesy The Guardian.com

Dr. Manila began interviewing Marcos in 1975, shortly after he was found. His tests revealed abnormal social conditioning but a normal IQ. The anthropologist did not believe wolves would care for a child, yet he acknowledged there is plenty of evidence that animals can develop interdependent relationships with humans based on the availability of food.

Did Marcos “communicate” with the animals, and did they love him? This concept is still hotly debated among those who study the cases of feral children. Whatever the case, Marcos fondly remembers his years living with the wolves. The friendships he formed with animals are the best relationships he’s ever had. In an interview with The Guardian, he stated his case: “When a person talks, they might say one thing but mean another. Animals don’t do that.”

Unlike the next case, Marcos was able to learn to speak. It is likely that “Victor,” a French boy, began his wild journey at an even younger age.

Victor of Aveyron, 1788–1928

Raised by unknown animals

In 1800, a French boy walked out of a forest. He was 12 years old, and it was later theorized he’d spent most of his life alone in the wilderness.

In 1932, Jean-Marc Itard’s report about Victor was translated into English and in the 1970s Francois Truffaut made the boy’s story into the celebrated film “The Wild Child.”

Scientists who studied him believe Victor was abandoned around the age of five. His body was covered with scars, most likely the result of surviving from an early age. He had strange quirks like selective hearing and outbursts of rage. It was said he would ignore a pistol shot, but immediately attend the cracking of a walnut (one of his favorite foods).

When Victor was found, he was naked and mute. His only interests were eating and sleeping. He made frequent escape attempts. His jailers/helpers kept him on a leash when they took the boy outside to relieve himself.

The French government handed him over to an expert in training deaf-mutes, but this went nowhere. Itard, a young doctor, volunteered to care for him. Among all the cases of feral children, Victor was perhaps the most studied. (Dr. Itard went on to pioneer educational methods for teaching special needs and deaf children after working with Victor.)

Itard made some progress in domesticating the boy but after years of working with him, it became clear Victor would never speak. From this evidence and other cases of isolates, scientists have concluded that learning to speak occurs between the age of two and puberty. After that, it is impossible to acquire language.

The second problem facing Victor had to do with his sexuality. At 12, he was becoming a sexual being yet had no social context for “love” or even lust. Most observers of his budding sexuality concluded that sexual behavior, like language, is acquired. His unfocused sex drive made him more difficult to work with.

Itard was quite clear about one thing: intellect cannot be separated from emotions and moral development. He concluded that these two human virtues — thought and feeling — are inextricably linked. Dr. Itard managed to teach Victor the rudiments of empathy, and how to dress in clothing, but he failed miserably in other areas.

Ultimately, it was Victor’s inability to imitate that made it impossible to learn. More recent research supports this — children who cannot attach to a trusted adult do not learn well and do not become socialized.

Victor’s whole story will never be known. How did he come to live in the woods? How did he survive there as a helpless child? Under Dr. Itard’s tutelage, the boy learned only the rudiments of sign language and never progressed beyond grunts.

In the words of Patrick Bowles, who wrote about the scientific study of Victor in the New York Times:

“The Wild Boy of Aveyron represents a unique case of total cultural deprivation, of moral nakedness: a human being stripped of education, custom, dignity, brotherhood, sex, almost of humanity itself.”

Dr. Itard abandoned Victor, writing that it was impossible to make progress because the boy was probably functionally retarded. Today, we know it is likely he was born ‘normal’ but could never be “redeemed” due to his lack of bonding with other humans at critical developmental stages.

Jean-Marc Itard is known as one of the founders of the field of otolaryngology. He developed new methods for training people suffering from partial deafness. Victor died at 40, after twenty years of living at the Institute for Deaf-Mutes. He had never spoken a complete sentence.

John Ssebunya, 1985 -

Raised by monkeys

Photo source: Wikipedia.com

The forests near Kampala Uganda are rife with animal life, including vervet monkeys. In 1990, five-year-old John fled his home after witnessing his father kill his mother. He thought — sensibly — his father might murder him, too. He chose life in the forest instead.

John spent the next eight months to a year barely surviving. He likely lived because a band of vervet monkeys adopted him.

He recalls the monkeys approaching, warily at first. After a few days, they learned he wasn’t a danger, and began sharing their foods: nuts, roots, and two staple foods of humans: sweet potatoes and cassava. After a few weeks, the monkeys taught John to travel with them and learn to forage for himself.

Although he was only living with the vervets for about a year, when a local woman found him in 1991 at the edge of the forest she thought he was a monkey, too. Millie, who was collecting firewood that day, looked more closely because he seemed to have no tail.

She saw an emaciated boy covered in hair and brought him back home.

When John had recovered and (years later) learned to speak, he still exhibited classic primate non-verbal communication. For example, he would not meet anyone’s eyes. Experts took this as one sign that his story was true. He had white knees (from walking on them), long fingernails, and was un-housebroken. John was also missing one of his big toes.

John S., who recovered. Photo Source: youtube.com

He could not speak but made howling and screeching noises.

John was covered in hair — typical for “wild” children — and was suffering from huge tapeworms. After his rescue, he was fed cooked foods but became ill for days.

Despite trouble adjusting, he soon began eating and recovered a normal physique.

Because his time in the jungle was relatively brief, John Ssebunya learned to speak. At the age of 13 (estimated) he still retained many monkey-like behaviors, however. His gait, for example, was an unusual shuffle. He would pull his gums back when smiling.

Interviewers from The Guardian asked John how he felt about the monkeys who raised him. After a long pause to consider his answer, he said:

“I am grateful, yes, I am. 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.”