Feral children through the ages

With Dani, authorities had discovered the rarest and most pitiable of creatures: a feral child. The term is not a diagnosis. It comes from historic accounts – some fictional, some true – of children raised by animals and therefore not exposed to human nurturing.

Here are some examples:

Philosophers and scientists have long speculated about the origin of language, and the power of love. Some saw feral children as the perfect subjects to study: Free of the imprint or influence of humanity. Others experimented on baby humans and monkeys.

Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was determined to discover the language that God would have spoken to Adam and Eve. In 1211, he had orphaned infants rounded up and ordered nurses to suckle and bathe the children, but never speak to them. If babies grow up in silence, he thought, they would speak the original language. But all the infants died. “He laboured in vain,” a monk named Salembene di Adam wrote in his Medieval Chronicles. “For the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.”

In the 15th century, King James IV of Scotland wanted to find out whether language was learned or innate. So he sent two children to be raised on a remote island by a mute woman. “Some says they spak guid Hebrew,” Robert Lindsay wrote in his 1814 Chronicles of Scotland. He added that there was no proof the boys ever talked.

Psychologist Harry Harlow studied infant monkeys and noticed that those raised without mothers were reclusive, socially defective and clung to cloth diapers. So in the 1950s, he started experimenting with the nature of nurturing. In one test, he put groups of baby monkeys in a room with two fake mothers: One was made of wire and gave out food. The other, made of terry cloth, held out its soft arms. Though the monkeys were hungry, they clung to the cloth — choosing comfort over nourishment.

Harlow also isolated monkeys in cages, but allowed them to watch other monkeys. Soon, the monkeys who were alone started staring blankly, circling their cages and self-mutilating. Later, he isolated monkeys entirely, some for as long as 15 years. “No monkey has died during isolation,” Harlow wrote in a 1965 study. “When initially removed from total social isolation, however, they usually go into a state of emotional shock, characterized by ... autistic self-clutching and rocking.” One monkey, isolated for three months, refused to eat after being released and died five days later. Harlow wrote, “The autopsy report attributed death to emotional anorexia.”