Feral Children
To understand feral children, we first must understand why a child becomes feral in the first place, and what the term implies
The idea of the self in social psychology
I spoke to my social psychology instructor a couple weeks ago and I brought up to him that I was interested in by the fact that when grown up in isolation, chimpanzees don't develop a sense of self. In social psychology, the term self refers to a creature's ability to understand what they are as an individual (ie. You understand that you're a human being).
A simple way that scientists have to study this, is by using something called the mirror test. The mirror test is executed by taking an animal, for example a chimpanzee, and placing a mirror into their enclosure until the subject becomes comfortable with it. Then the chimpanzee is taken, and scientists dye their eyebrows into a different color. When the chimp is shown the mirror again, the chimp reacts by immediately touching their face and exploring the new feature. This exploration, by the chimp, is proof of the existence of the self.
But!, and this is where it gets weird, if a chimpanzee is grown up without ever meeting another chimpanzee, then the chimp in question does not develop a sense of self. This means that the chimpanzee has no idea what a chimpanzee is, nor does it understand that it is one, this has several consequences.
Now this prompts the even more important question, does this also happen to humans?
The answer?
Though never tested in a lab (for obvious ethical reasons), myths and stories of so-called feral children are actually nothing new. These are children that for some reason, or another, have been abandoned at a young age and have been raised by the wild for some period of time.
Feral children
I found a video on youTube that exemplifies what I'm talking about
Summary
Though it would seem that animals don't 'nurture' or care for children, it can be seen that, like in the case of John and the vervet monkeys, animals can tell when humans are helpless, though, in John's case, it may also be true, that John was simply eating the excess food that the monkeys had harvested. It can also be seen that humans can make truly meaningful connections with other animals, such as that in the case of Oxana in Ukraine, despite what this video stated, another documentary:
shows that due to traumatic experiences in her childhood, she bonded with dogs instead of with humans, similar to how baby monkeys can be tricked into bonding with a fake mother at birth she seems to have had created this kind of bond with the dogs that were at each of the orphanages and schools that she was sent to. Contrary to what the first documentary says, she did not actually live in the wild with dogs, which poses an interesting point, that children can seemingly become feral without actually living in the wild, simply the presence of another species combined with the lack of a nurturing connection with other humans is enough to cause feralness to happen. There is a video of her barking like a dog, but it was filmed as a demonstration of what her behavior was like for a documentary that was being filmed, she was 16 at the time of the video, and she was deemed rehabilitated by the age of 13. It seems that the video of her actually had lasting consequences because she regressed back into dog-type behavior after doing it, but it wasn't permanent. All in all, this is very interesting, though, hard to research, especially with the ukraine case, as many of the sources contradict each other.
What Does All This Mean?
When we are young, our brains are malleable, during the first 3 to 5 years, our brains are determining how we communicate with things, and how to speak, walk, etc... When we don't get the correct information, such as in John's case, or Oxana's case, then it's like having a "bad foundation to a house" as Dr. Charles put it. That said, it's not impossible for them to recover, it simply is determined by the severity and length of time that these children spend in that environment.
Sources
This video states that Oxana Malaya's case was actually a hoax, and that she was found after just 18 months in her household, and that her actions and traits of being like a dog were actually developed in the foster home that she lived in, not on the farm.
A second source for John
I also found a documentary series on Animal Planet covering the 3 major cases of feral children
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