Following previous posts on Sunjit the Chicken Man and Andrei the Dog Boy, several BB readers emailed me their favorite references to wild children raised by animals. For example, this site talks about France's Wild Boy of Averyon, "a remarkable creature (who) came out of the woods" in 1800. The text comes from a great book called The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, by Roger Shattuck. Here is one naturalist's observations of the Wild Boy:
"When he is sitting down, and even when he is eating, he makes a guttural sound, a low murmur; and he rocks his body from right to left or backwards and forwards, with his head and chin up, his mouth closed, and his eyes staring at nothing. In this position he sometimes has spasms, convulsive movements that may indicate that his nervous system has been affected.
There is nothing wrong with the boy's five senses, but their order of importance seemed to be modified. He relies first on smell, then on taste; his sense of touch comes last. His sight is sharp; his hearing seems to shut out many sounds people around him pay close attention to. Nothing interests him but food and sleep."
BB reader Andy Scudder also points us to a transcript of a NOVA documentary called "Secret of the Wild Child." And then Alberto Gaitan sends us to FeralChildren.com a comprehensive clearinghouse of information on "isolated, confined, wolf and wild children." Perhaps it's time for a big screen remake of the 1977 TV series Lucan?
