A “wolf girl” is found in Malaga: what does science say about these children?

Last March, agents Local Police CoinIn Malaga, a man and a disheveled teenager were found in a broken car. The young woman looked dejected and withdrawn from human interaction. Several investigations were enough to find out that it was “wolf girl“, who has been missing in Switzerland for several years.

Her father kidnapped her years ago and apparently he raised her in the forest A Swiss man with his sisters. Because she was removed from society at a very young age, the girl lost all social skills, joining the list of what are called wild children or wolf children.

At the moment, the wolf girl, about whom little is known, has been repatriated and is being received by the social services of her country. He will soon turn 18 and will become adult. There is still no word on what will be done from now on or which family members will be able to take care of her.

Why is she called the she-wolf?

In fact, the girl was classified as a wolf girl due to an unofficial designation associated with some real-life cases.

These cases are also known as “feral children” and include all those who were abandoned in early childhood natural and/or unsocialized environment. There were cases where children were abandoned, others were kidnapped but escaped and got lost. Some were lost by accident, without previous abductions. And finally, there are those who, like this wolf girl, grew up in nature with a family member who also did not provide them with sufficient socialization.

This girl never went to school, and her only social connections were her father and sisters, who were in a similar situation to her. Apparently, the father had some kind of mental disorder, about which there is little information.

These babies are commonly called wolf children because of stories such as that of Mowgli, the cartoon’s main character. The jungle book. There are many true stories of children who grew up alone for years, cared for only by animals such as wolves, monkeys or wild cats. However, it should be noted that there is no evidence that this was exactly the case. Perhaps these wild animals learned to tolerate children and did not attack them. But not enough evidence work as nurses.

However, these cases have attracted the interest of many scientists because they help us understand how the environment shapes human behavior and the extent to which we have certain innate abilities. Moreover, it has been noted that rehabilitation of these children can help in developing new ways of learning, for example, for children with diseases such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Real cases of feral children

Many of them have been documented stories of wild children. One of the most famous is the story of Jeanie, an American girl who did not live in nature, but was locked in a room without any social stimulation. As soon as she was born, she was locked up by her father, who considered her mentally retarded. He and her mother fed her to keep her alive, but nothing more.

When her mother ran away from home, leaving her and her brother alone, the little girl 13 years. It was then that she came into the world as a wild child. He could neither speak nor swallow. He also had no control over his sphincters. I was practically a child in a teenager’s body.

A study was soon launched, in which psychologists, speech therapists and other specialists took part, with the help of which not only important data were obtained at a scientific level, but also very important successes were achieved for the girl at the cognitive level. It has been shown that, contrary to the father’s claims, I didn’t have any mental retardation. He learned quite quickly, although he suffered from a lack of social stimulation for many years. Unfortunately, shortly after the study, the science that had protected Genie so strongly abandoned her, leaving her at the mercy of several foster families who again treated her almost like an animal.

Story Marina Chapman It also has a very sad beginning, but the progress is more joyful. When she was four or five years old, someone kidnapped her from a Colombian village and then abandoned her in the jungle. There he spent several years living with capuchin monkeys; who, according to her, were responsible for her care. Eventually she was found by hunters and taken to a brothel, and from there as a slave to a family of mafia members. Her life continued like this, each time taking an even worse turn than the previous one, until a neighbor saved her and sent her to live with some English relatives. There he rebuilt his life and today he has no problems with socialization.

His story questioned many timesprecisely because he does not have the typical features of wild children. His bones showed that he spent a long period of childhood suffering from malnutrition, but it is not known exactly what may have happened to him.

The True Story of Tarzan?

In 1996, a two-year-old boy appeared in the Nigerian jungle. He walked on two legs, but rested his hands on the ground, like a chimpanzee. It is suspected that his parents abandoned him because he had some kind of disability when he was still a child. This is impossible for a child of such a young age. survive in the jungle. Therefore, taking into account his walking style and the fact that he made sounds similar to those of chimpanzees, it is believed that he may have been in the care of a family of these monkeys.

Wolf Girl Scam

We have already seen that the Swiss girl found in Coin is known as the wolf girl, rather for an unofficial reason. But there are reports of cases of two girls who supposedly lived among wolves.

It’s about the Indians Amala and Kamala, found in the Bengal jungle by the Rev. Although their case attracted the attention of many people who took pity on the story, scientists who studied it noted that it was most likely a hoax and that they were in fact autistic.

What is the connection with autism?

The story of Amala and Kamala goes back to early 20th century. Perhaps girls born in 1919 and they were one year old when the monk found them. At that time, little was known about autism. In fact, it was first mentioned just ten years ago, but little was known about its symptoms, much less their origin.

Today, the origin remains quite mysterious, although there are certain hypotheses, for example, about a disorder of synaptic pruning, in which unused neural connections are eliminated and the most necessary ones are strengthened. Today it is clear that children with ASD They are very socially stimulated. Therefore, the origin of your difficulties is biological. On the other hand, children like the Swiss Wolf exhibit symptoms that might at first be confused, but they have a completely different origin: lack of socialization.

Imitation and socialization are important factors in child development. The synaptic pruning we mentioned is partly responsible for the plasticity of the brain and helps us adapt to the circumstances in which we live. The problem is that these children live in circumstances that are not conducive to their development. Therefore, there are connections that cannot be strengthened, mainly because they were never created.

The fact that both questions seem to have some relationship and studying one can help to better understand the other does not mean that they are identical. Children with ASD are not feral children, and neither is the Swiss wolf for that matter. It’s a colloquial term that shows how bad things are, but it can have a negative connotation associated with it that has nothing to do with reality.