The Feral Child – A retard or a survivor – or both?
Being feral means subhuman; a feral child is one whose upbringing consists of a total isolation from the human species. There have been the classic cases brought up in Kipling’s ‘The Jungle book’ represented by Mowgli and another fictional character is Tarzan.
But there exist non-fictional cases of these children…..cases of children being brought up by dogs in the Ukraine, children brought up by wolves, children brought up by bears and sadly children locked up in a room for most of their lives which constitutes child abuse.
A child’s mind soaks up like a sponge from age 2. this age is critical in the childs upbringing. Altough we dont remember much from age 2, the function of the cortex part of the brain is to prepare a foundation for the following subjects the brain is about to recieve and store. Mainly the phonetic, auditory and perception sectors.
Sticking to those children whose upbringing consisted of animal adoption; these are humanly retarded however their natural skills acquired as instinct allow them to survive in the wild. For example the latest tsunami incident in SE Asia, we know that the human death toll soared to a three hundred thousand body count, however the animal that succumbed were few in numbers. This attributed to that extra animal instinct creatures have to sense events preemptively.
Therefore the feral child has that advantage onto the rest of humanity which has discarded its natural skills.
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if you dont have the mental capacity to write more than one line go to the off topic forum or alternevely dont post into threads you dont want to understand or join in into a serious discussion.....wait what was that ?
did i just type the word 'serious' for SlipknoT to reatd ?
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A survivalist by all accounts, however, it is possible for them to be "Retarded" mentally, or at least for them to not have the usual mental-capacity of a "Normal" Human Being - I mean, these people are raised in the wild, by animals! So of course they could survive where others would not, but their "Retardedness" would affect them if they were to enter a "Normal" Human society....
The perception that ‘we’ get is seeing these children as retarded however they are not the mentally born retarded case that we associate to other children suffering from Down syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome and fragile X which are the three most common inborn causes of mental retardation.
These are actually healthy newborns that in some form or another have had human contact deprived from them mainly cause the parents have neglected any attention whatsoever. As the human brain does not accept that, it forces its host to look for an alternate example to follow and learn from.
The case of Oxana Malaya is a fine example of this
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I'm not sure if such a Feral Child can ever be equally as
adept at his natural environment as the animals that
raied him. There are still certain mental, and more so
physical, limitaions that cannot be overcome.
For example, one can take a baby boy or girl, and very
carefully and strongly raise him/her as the opposite sex.
Such a baby may grow up with a personality and mind
of the opposite sex, but he/she still will not be like a true
member of the opposite sex, both physically, and in some
mental aspects (agressiveness, which is heavily due to
levels of Testosterone; or ability to concentrate on just
one thing without being distracted, which is due to men's
brain halves being less connected than women's brains).
The Feral Child may not be able to survive as well as
his "parents", though still much better than a normal
human.
I don't know if I'd cal them "retarded", since I think
that is a term usually reserved to people with Down
Syndrome (excluding colloquial usage ofcourse). But I
may be wrong.
Last edited by King Burger on Mar 16th, 2005 at 02:39 AM
Both. They have mentally diminished capacities but have survived on their own. They cannot--that is not WILL NOT or HAVE NOT, but CANNOT--learn and function on the same level as normal people. Thus, they are mentally retarded.
First off the bat, your definition is incorrect. 'Feral' does not mean 'sub-human'! 'Feral' relates to the state of being untamed, unrestricted, or wild.
Secondly, being raised in a way that is different from your own, does not simply mean that someone is 'retarded'. However, it is retarded to think that different = retarded.
The question of knowledge is also purely contextual. Someone who has been raised in a feral environment will know different things to someone who has been raised in an urban environment. Notice the word 'different' - not 'better' or 'worse'...simply different.
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It a petty observation for you to nod, as the term subhuman does exist in the abnormal human environment as opposed to a general human infant upnringing. having said that, the being of a Feral child is termed as Subhuman when compared under the normal human environment.
We are talking about the same thing ; arent we ? ^ V
There is no implication as i stated above that that retardism means the opposite of what you said so i dont know why i have a feeling you are attacking me on this
the term Retarded derives from latin. In Italian when one is late it is 'in Ritardo'.....the way its interpretated differs.
In this thread the term retarded is referred to the loss of time a child's brain has on picking up the basic building blocks of Comprehenshion, Speech, Communication followed by manners within its environment which the general public would call Society. When a child has lost that opportunity to implement and develop those fundemantal requiremnets that the general Society requires, then YES the now Feral child is at a loss and disadvantage as compared to the other children brought up by a responsable parenthood or parental figures or a human society.
a child that is brought into a Human Society AFTER that period of time that the brain is required to absorb the necessary skills is at a loss however if the child is left in the Feral environment, then the being will NOT BE retarded as it will have the necessary requirements to survive.
NB: A Feral state is attributed to child neglection and is against the law.
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I'm not sure where this topic is going, but a kid being raised by animals is no less interesting than a lioness raising a gazell. But, you know what...both have happened. Hey, a child being raised by goats is better than "him" being aborted....? Right?
The truth remains that it is better for a child to exist. Be him/her raised by lions, goats, apes or gays....
Was that controversial enough?
I wish I cold pull potatoes out of boiling water without being effected by it.
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The last part is your opinion, and the child IS mentally retarded in the sense that he or she will be unable to learn basic "human skills" to the same extent as a normal child.
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The Lobo Wolf Girl of Devil's RiverIn May of 1835, the Wolf Girl of Devil's River was born to Mollie Dent, who had gone with her husband to the Beaver Lake area to trap. Mollie was having problems with the birth, so her husband, John Dent, rode to get help from a Mexican-run goat ranch on the Pecos Canyon, but he was struck and killed by lightning before he could return accompanied by the Mexican couple. By the time the Mexicans reached Mollie, she had died, apparently in childbirth. Wolf tracks in the vicinity suggested that the newborn infant had been devoured by the lobo wolves of the area.
Sighted after 10 years
However, in 1845 a boy saw a girl, in the company of a pack of lobo wolves, attacking a herd of goats. Less than a year later, a Mexican woman at San Felipe saw two large wolves and a girl devour a freshly-killed goat. She observed the girl run off — first on all fours, and then on two legs.
Capture… and escape
A hunt was mounted, and after three days the Lobo Girl of Devil's River was caught after fighting wildly to keep her freedom. She was taken to a ranch (really just a two-room hovel) and locked in. Her howling attracted answering cries from wolves far and wide, and a large pack of wolves rushed the corrals, attacking the goats, cows and horses. Shooting started, and in the confusion the girl managed to remove the board nailed over the window and make her escape.
Sighted seven years later
In 1852, a group of frontiersmen surveying a better route to El Paso saw a girl suckling two wolf cubs on a sand bar in the river, who then ran off, carrying the cubs. She would have been 17 in that year; but she was never seen again.
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Abandoned boy said to have been raised by a dog
04.08.2004
By ANDREW OSBORN in Moscow
A Mowgli-like wild boy who appears to have been raised by a dog since he was three months old has been discovered living in a remote part of Siberia seven years after he was abandoned by his parents.
Andrei Tolstyk was discovered three weeks ago by social workers who wondered why the seven-year-old had not enrolled at his local school in the beautiful Siberian region of Altai.
Deprived of human contact for so long, Andrei could not talk and had adopted many dog-like traits, including walking on all fours, biting people, sniffing his food before he ate it and general feral behaviour.
In an extraordinary case of life imitating art, Andrei, like Rudyard Kipling's fictional Mowgli in 'The Jungle Book', had spent almost his entire youth in the company of animals.
According to the local press, his existence had been forgotten.
His mother left home when he was three months old, entrusting Andrei's care to his alcoholic invalid father who also appears to have abandoned the boy soon afterwards and drifted away.
Incredibly, the hamlet of Bespalovskoya where the family lived was so sparsely populated and the house so remote that the parents' absence went unnoticed by the lonely outpost's few other inhabitants.
Instead, Andrei reportedly forged a close bond with the only other living thing around, the family guard dog, which somehow helped the young baby survive and grow up.
Doctors say that Andrei was born with speech and hearing problems anyway but that his wayward parents made no effort with him for the short time that they hung around.
Dubbed a 'dog boy' by some in the Russian media, he has now been moved to a shelter for orphans in a local town where he is being encouraged to mix with other children.
When he first arrived, the shelter staff told RIA-Novosti that he was afraid of people, behaved aggressively and erratically and continued to sniff all his food before eating it. They were, however, able to communicate him using basic sign language.
Two weeks after his arrival they say he began to walk on two legs and has since mastered the art of eating with a spoon, making his own bed and playing with a ball.
The other orphans are reported to be suspicious of the boy they call 'wild' but Andrei is said to have struck up a friendship with a little girl with whom he communicates using sign language.
Doctors, paediatricians and psychologists are currently carrying out a series of tests on Andrei to ascertain whether he can be taught normal human behaviour.
If the answer is yes he will be transferred to a normal children's home; otherwise he will be dispatched to a specialised boarding school.
Police have initiated a search for his parents, who are likely to face various charges of neglect and endangerment if and when they are found.
Andrei Tolstyk's is not the first case of 'a feral child' in Russia. In 1998 police near Moscow 'rescued' Ivan Mishukov, then six years old, from the clutches of a pack of wild dogs he had lived with for the last two years.
Mishukov left the family home when he was four to get away from his mother and her abusive alcoholic boyfriend. He took to begging and won the dogs' trust by offering them scraps of food. In return they protected him, from the cold and from ill-wishers, and made him their pack leader. The police tried to rescue him three times but each time he was protected by the dogs.
They eventually managed to separate the boy from the dogs by leaving bait for the pack in a restaurant kitchen.
Mishukov, who could speak before he went wild, has been successfully reintegrated into society though is said to still dream of dogs.
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What the phuck-a-duck do you mean by 'human skills'!?!?! If a child has never been taught how to read or write, then they are not classified as 'retarded' for being unable to do so! Reading and writing are not innate skills - they are learnt.
GCG...You're right, we are talking about the same thing...I just don't agree with your definition of 'sub-human'.
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The child is mentally retarded because he or she is INCAPABLE OF LEARNING THESE SKILLS AT A LATER TIME AND DATE. THUS, HIS OR HER MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IS HINDERED OR, AS ONE COULD SAY IT, RETARDED.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...By your 'logic' - and I use that term lightly - you are saying that a person is unable to learn a new language once they emerge from their infancy! You are completely wrong and it amuses me to read your posts. Thank you for that. It's good to smile.
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Like a while back a boy was found with a herd of gazelle's and he could run fast just like them.
Also a story about two sisters who were raised by wolves, people found them and brought them back to a town and tried to teach them to talk, eat normal food and walk on two feet. Sadly one sister was so used to eating raw meat that when she didn't have it after a period of time, she died of malnutrition.
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Mar 16th, 2005 12:58 AM
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