Did You Hear The One About The Bird Boy?
"Russian care workers have rescued a seven-year-old “bird-boy” who can communicate only by “chirping” after his mother raised him in a virtual aviary, it has been reported.
Authorities say the neglected child was found living in a tiny two-room apartment surrounded by cages containing dozens of birds, bird feed and droppings.
The so-called “bird-boy” does not understand any human language and communicates instead by chirping and flapping his arms, Russian newspaper Pravda has reported.
Social worker Galina Volskaya, who was involved is rescuing the child from his home in Kirovsky, Volgograd, said he was treated like another pet by his 31-year-old mother who never spoke to him.
Miss Volskaya said: “When you start talking to him, he chirps.”
Russian authorities say the child was not physically harmed but is suffering from “Mowgli syndrome”, named after the Jungle Book character raised by wild animals, and cannot engage in any normal human communication.
Pravda reported: “(his mother) had her own domestic birds and fed wild ones. (She) neither beat him nor left him without food. She just never talked to him. It was all the birds that communicated with the boy and taught him birds’ language."
Read the rest of the story here.
posted by birdchick at 9:34 AM
2 Comments:
Yeah, right. Wasn't there a similar story out several years ago about a "dog boy" orphan found in Russia. He had been abandoned and raised by a pack of dogs? Someone should check this out on Snopes.
Ichthyophile - These things DO happen. Some people just are not made to be parents. That statement has MANY layers to it. some people are just poor parents and some people have a child and have no earthly idea what to do with it. or they resent it, or they never intended to have it or had it thrust upon them (being an aunt, or a grandmother, or such), or they were ashamed by it (single mother?) or are simply just not completely sane.
These are people who will put children in rooms alone, and give then food once in a while. or lock them away in a closet. Or keep them in the 'backroom' at 13 years old, still with a crib and diapers.
There are people out there who have too many animals: let them live ungroomed, in their own feces, and often without enough food, or basic human-animal care, resulting in what essentially becomes a growing colony of, say, cats in one person's home, all mostly feral because ther'es no way one person can give 32 different cats a good amount of socialization.
And that socialization is REQUIRED. ti's the difference between fluffy and that stray cat who hisses at you and doesn't let you come within 6 feet of it.
it's learning to be touched, learning those noises humans make are normal, it's learning that being petted is pleasant and that sitting in someone's lap is nice.
it's required for humans too.
Infants are not born with a knowledge of language. They develop it, slowly, after listening to the people and sounds around it, connecting a sound to an object (animals do that too. Dogs who's ears perk up when you say "walk", cats who cower in the back corner of the bed when you say 'vet'), and then mimic it.
Further, it's in the earlyyears in life that you learn emotions. you understand that hitting someone hurts, that sadness works like this, and that joy is like this. If someone doesnt' get this interaction, then they fail to develop "correctly". They can infact learn.. but it's like moving to another country where things are very different. You'll eventually learn that the proper answer to 'how are you?" is "fine, thank you" even if youre dying of the plague. But your first thought will always be to say "Half dead, thanks."
Just because we are human doesn't mean that we are naturally civilized. Civilation is taught. if it wasn't, all the nations in the world would be the same.
Language is taught, else we'd all speak the same.
Why is it so unbelievable that a human raised in or around another species, or in isolation, would latch on to what they could interact with and see, and eventually mimic that.
I mean, we go on about dogs who "think they're human" due to how they're raised.. while it's horrible, why not human who thinks he's dog?
also: http://www.feralchildren.com/
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