Babies Reared by Animals

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17835, 1 May 1926, Page 17 (Supplement)

Babies Reared by Animals

Authentic instances found in India.

IN most popular superstitions is a foundation of truth. Take, for example, the stories, long current in India and elsewhere, of wolf children—children carried off by she-wolves in infancy, and suckled by them. Cases of this kind no doubt gave rise to the legend of the werewolves, human beings who were said to be able to change themselves at will into wolves and back again.

Such a thing, of course, is impossible. But wolf-children are not so uncommon. details of several authentic cases being given by Sir Bamptylde Fuller in his book, ‘‘The Science of Ourselves.”

These unfortunates had been carried off and reared by female wolves, and subsequently rescued when they had grown too big to enter the burrows of their savage foster-parents. A male wolf-child was discovered some years ago sitting in the company of a wolf at the entrance to its burrow’ in the Agra district of India. He was taken to the Secundra Missionary Asylum, where he remained until his death nearly thirty years later. During all these years he could never be taught to stand, completely tipright, and he never learnt to speak. In fact, his sole accomplishment seems to have been that he learned to use his .fingers in eating his food instead of “wolfing” it.

Another wolf-child, rescued alive from the actual interior of a wolf’s den, lived in the Agra Government Asylum for twenty-two years. The officer who was in immediate charge of this child, however, taught him to walk erect on level ground for a short distance. _ In all other respects, however, he remained more wolf-like than human; he had no sense of decency, preferred raw to cooked meat, and never learnt tu speak.

_Alj_of which goes to prove that .children learn by imitating their elders, and in no other way. In this they differ radically from the lower animals. Their conduct, being instinctive, is independent of education and comes of itself.

A puppy brought up apart from other dogs grows up with the manners and utterances of a dog; a cuckoo does not lose its distinctive habits or notes by being nurtured by hedge-sparrows. But an infant brought up amongst brutish surroundings will never rise above the brutes.

And this holds good no matter whether such a child’s foster-parent is a wolf or some other animal slightly higher in the scale of evolution. An infant brought up amongst monkeys, for instance, will, on being taken away from them, still behave like these animals.

This has been proved on several occasions. Only a year or so back a female ape-child Was found in the company of a troop of these creatures in the jungle near Naini Tal, in India, and taken to the hospital there by her captor. •

For a little while the authorities were in some doubt as to whether she was really a human being. She sat down like a monkey, and all her actions were monkey-like. Exposure to the elements had caused a thick growth of hair down each side of the face and spine, giving her a 'typically ape-like appearance. All doubts as to her origin, however, were presently set at rest by the discovery of vaccination marks on both arms. Apparently she had been abandoned in infancy, and monkeys were her foster-parents. She was very frightened when first caught, and cried and whimpered. She could not talk, and would eat nothing in the beginning but nuts and raw fruit, but later on she was induced to take bread and milk.