I don't know how I missed this one when it originally came out. I know it is old news, but I never heard about it. Sorry if all of you other folks had, and this is just a rehash.
There have been several cases of feral children throughout history. This may be one of the first successful cases of one adapting to normal life.
That's really cool. There was a similar story yesterday on the AP wires about a girl in Cambodia being found in the jungle as well.
That's nothing! From today's Daily News... Jungle girl found alive Cambodian given up for dead in '88 returns as 'half-animal' PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A little girl who disappeared more than 18 years ago has emerged from the jungles of northeastern Cambodia - naked, unable to speak, "half-human and half-animal," police said yesterday. In 1988, 8-year-old Rochom P'ngieng vanished while herding buffalo in a remote area, said Chea Bunthoeun, a police official in Rattanakiri province, some 200 miles northeast of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. Her father, Ksor Lu, a policeman from the Jrai ethnic minority group, said he believed the girl had been eaten by wild animals and he eventually gave her up for dead. But on Saturday, loggers caught a naked woman, with long, matted hair hanging down to her legs, stealing food from their lunchboxes. When Ksor heard about the incident, he went to see the woman - and immediately recognized a scar on her left arm. His lost daughter had the exact same scar, the result of a knife cut. Mao San, the police chief of Oyadao district in Rattanakiri, said the woman was "half-human and half-animal." Although they will undergo DNA tests to prove the relationship, Ksor has no doubts that she is his daughter. Ksor said the woman cannot speak any intelligible language, so she cannot explain how she survived all those years. "When I saw her, she was naked and walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey. ... She was bare-bones skinny," the father said. "She was shaking and picking up grains of rice to eat. Her eyes were red like a tiger's eyes." The woman refuses to wear clothes or to wash, will not eat with chopsticks and fights off anyone who gets too near. But Ksor said she was able to communicate some needs. "When she is hungry, she pats her stomach as a signal," he said. "If she is not sleeping, she just sits and glances left and right, left and right." But the father is optimistic his long-lost daughter will readjust to civilization. "It is not easy, but life is waiting ahead for her," he said. http://www.nydailynews.com/01-19-2007/news/wn_report/story/490079p-412776c.html
I was actually reading about the Cambodian girl first, and then the Tarzan boy story was linked. It is amazing that the girl actually has been trying to run back into the jungle. I guess it shouldn't be, since that is what she knows best, but is interesting none-the-less. What I think is really cool about the monkey boy is that he could communicate with the Chimps.
Is it right to pull these people away from the wild? They want to live in the wilderness, and that is what they have adapted to. Somehow it seems wrong to capture them and force them to live in society, just because that is the standard.
Good question. It's sort of like catching an Amazon or African tribe and making them adjust to life they do not know.
