Feral Child Found in India

I just came across this recent article on the BBC News website: www.bbc.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">India police search for parents of girl 'living with monkeys'
India Police Search for Parents of Girl "Living with Monkeys"

A couple of points that I found interesting:

The little girl, aged between eight and 10, was found a few weeks ago in a forest in Uttar Pradesh.
Doctors said she could not communicate and displayed "monkey-like" traits.
A senior police official told BBC Hindi she had been playing with a pack of monkeys and imitating their behaviour when police went to rescue her.

The police official, Suresh Yadav, said the monkeys attacked his squad when they arrived to take her away.

Of course there's no telling at this point how long she'd been living with the monkeys. Some details do give a clue however:

Doctors said she was malnourished when she was brought in, with long hair and nails, and wounds on her body.
She was also unable to communicate but would screech and initially walked on all fours.

Historically, there are a lot of hoaxes and folklore about such cases. But there are also a few actual cases on the record before this one.

Most of the children end up with severe developmental issues and some physical issues. There are cases of people who allege to have experienced this, but when they end up living fairly normal lives, their stories are doubted.

Some interesting cases:

www.zmescience.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">Feral Children

mg.co.za..." target="_blank" class="postlink">Child of the wild still spurns life as a human

Its amazing to me how the various animals in these cases will adopt the child and how the child attempts to fit in. I know that the cases are probably too few to really establish much scientifically, but I wonder what this does to a child's self-consciousness.

a reply to: TobyFlenderson
Abovetopsecret

Thanks for the extra links to other cases. Some very interesting digging to be done.

a reply to: TobyFlenderson

I have a really old book that mentioned a boy raised by wolves who became a policeman-if he was raised by pigs that would be priceless.

On a serious note I have heard that these 'wild childs' often inherit the traits of their surrogate parents. They walk like them and emit sounds like snarling or squealing. I've seen a photo and in this one a child was raised by a wolf and it appeared that he or she had never learned to walk upright instead the child looked to move like a canine

Wild child's are fascinating and reinforces the fact that man and mammal.truly have a symbiotic relationship.

a reply to: TobyFlenderson

Your last two links seem to be bad. Or is it just me? I'd really like to read the other sites.