[My favourite wolf-boy will always be Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli of The Jungle Book, together with the Disney movie remake which I watched countless of times as a child: "Look for the bare necessities/ The simple bare necessities/ Forget about your worries and your strife..."]

Image is a picture of Baloo and Mowgli from Disney’s The Jungle Book 2 movie, and is retrieved from: http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808413751/photo/462850

There have been reports about children being raised by animals, more commonly by bears and wolves.  According to ‘The Rough Guides to Unexplained Phenomena’, most accounts of wolf-children recorded since the early nineteenth century have come from India, mostly from the jungles of Bengal. One example would be the documented history of the Midnapore children written by The Revd J. Singh (Wolf Children and Feral Man, 1942), who had discovered and later on brought up the children. Singh was a missionary of the Minnapore Orphanage who made regular evangelical trips to the aboriginal tribes of his district. In 1920, people from a village reported to Singh about two small ‘ghosts’ with big eyes always walking with the wolves back to the den. After investigating, those ‘ghosts’ were actually 2 little human girls aged 1 & 1/2, and 8 years old respectively. Singh took them back with him to the orphanage. Unfortunately the younger one died within a year and she never spoke or walked upright however the other girl learnt to stand, eat human food and speak a few words under his care.

 Other accounts include the two Syrian gazelle boys reported in The Sunday Times, August 1973 and in London’s Daily Mirror, February 1971. One of them could run at 50mph with the gazelles and had superb eyesight and very sharp hearing. The other one would approach gazelles and lick their foreheads as though saying hello and showing that he recognizes them.

There is also the ostrich boy, Sidi Mohamed, who told his story, and is quoted by Armen from Notes Africaines (April 1945), about how he came upon an ostrich nest in North Africa at 5 or 6 years old and stayed there. The parent birds returned to the nest and they became used to him. For ten years, he stayed with them and survived by eating grass and learning how to match their speed in running. At night, the two ostriches would extend a wing over him as shelter. Sidi was found by hunters one day and returned to his parents. It took him a long time to readjust to human ways and he was always wishing for his old way of life among the ostriches.

Reference:
Rickard, Bob, & Michell, John. (2007). The Rough guide to unexplained phenomena 2nd edition. Strand, London WC2R 0RL: Rough Guides Ltd.

If you want to read more on the topic, here are books that you can check out at our libraries.

All Rights Reserved, Minn. : Stone Arch Books, c2010

Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book retold by Carl Bowen

Publisher: Minneapolis, Minn. : Stone Arch Books, c2010.

Call No.: J BOW

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All Rights Reserved, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, c2001.

The wolf girls: an unsolved mystery from history by Jane Yolen and Heidi Elisabet Yolen Stemple

Publisher: New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, c2001.
Call No.: JP YOL
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All Rights Reserved, Dial Books for Young Readers, c2005.

The boy who ran with the gazelles by Marianna Mayer
Publisher: New York : Dial Books for Young Readers, c2005. 
Call No: JP MAY

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All websites are last accessed on 24 Feb 2010. Please refer to the terms and conditions on the homepages for use.
For the availability of the above book titles, please check the library catalogue.

Ms Sharifah A. Latif
Assoc. Librarian, Children’s Services