Dog Community

Feral children

Posted : 3/4/2007 12:09:40 AM

I watched a documentary a while ago on a girl called Oxana Malaya, who was brought up by dogs since she was 3 years old. Her parents were alcoholics, there was no space in the house for everybody to sleep in, and so one night, the girl crawled in a kennel with dogs and that's how she spent most of her childhood. When she was 9 she was taken into a mental hospital after a neighbor reported on her to authorities. I found a not-so-good clip on Youtube about her:http://youtube.com/watch?v=K3nt9P8XeIo .
What's interesting is how she adopted to dog culture - she has had the same "problems" as we see in our dogs: she has little emotional control, zero boredom tolerance, she is very pushy and physical. She doesn't believe that words are necessary to communicate at all... which just shows you how dogs see our conversations with them as useless blathering about. One other thing I wondered about is whether or not she was raised as an "alpha"... According to the documentary I watched, the mother dog "raised" her - Oxana even drunk her milk with other pups. Apparently, when Oxana was taken in, the dog ran after the van for miles and miles, until she passed out.
Also, there is a similar and opposite story of a 4 y.o. Ivan Mishukov who's been treated as an alpha by a pack of stray dogs downtown Moscow. He won their trust by getting food for them (by begging, etc.), and they in return protected him and kept him worm in cold weather... (It took a few goes for cups to pull out a boy and take him away - the dogs aggressively protected him.)
That got me to thinking, if Oxana didn't take an alpha position, that must have worked out OK... there must have been a mutual understanding and a good relationship with other dogs in a pack! Granted, the girl lived in a dogs' world, not as we are used to thinking about it: the dog lives in "our" world, therefore, teach it our way... be its leader. Makes me think when dogs need a human as a leader... And that's what's interesting. Search and read a bit about her, it poses some questions I think.

erica1989

Posted : 3/4/2007 12:25:18 AM

That was very interesting!

badrap

Posted : 3/4/2007 12:29:56 AM

i saw that documentary as well, though i didn't see the whole thing ... i didn't really know what to think of it because it seemed illogical to me that she would've "walked" on all fours. how did she keep up with the pack, who were designed to run that way?

i'm not sure it makes sense to me from an evolutionary standpoint that humans could really be "feral" in an enviornment where human contact was an option. in an extremely remote, tribal type situation, maybe this could happen. otherwise i think it just qualifies as extreme anti-social behavior, and i have to believe, unless she was mentally ill, that on some level it was a choice.

that's just my opinion, though, and it's an underdeveloped opinion at that.

houndlove

Posted : 3/4/2007 5:14:01 PM

Wow guys this is so weird. For some reason I've developed a little temporary obsession with "feral children" beginning last week or so. I think the topic just came up in coversation between DH and me (we don't have cable so it wasn't anything I saw on TV) and I went online and did some research because it interests me. Anyway, there is a whole web site about feral children: www.feralchildren.com and the information there is really exhaustive and fascinating. I'd urge you guys to go take a peek because it's really interesting.

DH also mentioned the Russian boy who was reportedly "alpha" of a dog pack, but after doing some reading on my own that doesn't seem to be the case so much as the boy had a relationship with them similar to the one homeless people have with semi-feral dogs that they hang out with. He was abandoned at an older age than a lot of the other feral children and also was in a city context not in complete isolation from humans, and wound up basically developing a symbiotic relationship to some feral dogs: he begged on the streets for scraps of food and shared them with the dogs, and in turn the dogs sheltered and protected him. What made that case notable primarily was the age of the child, not that it happened at all because that kind of thing happens all the time with dogs and humans (tit for tat).

mudpuppy

Posted : 3/5/2007 12:24:35 PM

I have trouble with a lot of these stories. Wouldn't a human child raised on nothing but raw meat die of scurvy after six months or so?

TinaK

Posted : 3/5/2007 1:18:26 PM

I lot of these stories from the 'feral children' web site is a mish-mash of kids who grew up in total solitary confinement, and those who grew up with animals with minimal human contact... How these kids were rehabilitated depended on the severity of their situation, and I don't know if I would have labeled them *all* as feral. There might also be a touch of sensationalism here that may cause some filmmakers to exaggerate a few things here and there...

As far as Oxana Malaya goes, she did get out of her kennel. With dogs, she walked around, communicated with humans, her parents would throw her some food here and there, etc. - she probably didn't each raw all the time. I don't know the details, but from the film I watched, her palms looked quite abnormal since she liked to run around on all four. Ivan, the Russian boy is rehabilitated fine - he speaks fine, and I think he is in school... But, he says that he doesn't like to be with humans - with dogs, he says it's easier, and he still dreams about them.

Of course, it's interesting to know the details of their life with animals, but, I am just wondering what would it be like to live as one of the subordinates among dogs or wolves... Live in piece, and not get nipped to pieces

Scout in Canada

Posted : 3/5/2007 1:32:12 PM

WOW, what a bizarre, but interesting story. I wish I had seen the documentary. I'm going to check out that website too.

It's like one of those disturbing social experiments that you are interested to hear the outcome of, but of course you don't actually want it to happen....

I guess it's hard to say to what level the dog interaction affected her - if you consider that she did have limited contact with her parents. It's all very strange. I'd like to learn more about it.

Xerxes

Posted : 3/5/2007 2:20:49 PM

I guess I need to review all of these cases, but from a dog psychology standpoint. When I viewed the shows before I always thought of it in terms of human psychology.

Thanks for bringing this up.

keedokes

Posted : 3/6/2007 1:36:19 AM

Here's a question for you guys...if you had young children, and some terrible disaster happened that completely pushed you out of the picture, would you feel better if you knew your toddlers were being 'raised' by dogs? Would it give you hope? That they wouldn't just be wandering around on their own to die off, but somehow created a relationship with someone who would 'take care' of them?

Any time I think about not being here to protect my little girl, I freak out, and I don't know how I would react to her being taken care of by dogs, but I do know that it would give me comfort that she was alive and not in considerable pain, etc.