# Boy raised by wild dogs for six years
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [June 20, 2001, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503 "2001-06-20T18:18:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Cheese\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheese_Head)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2001, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503/1 "2001-06-20T18:18:30Z")
Bizarre, sad story. Hope he does ok, but why didn’t he just walk to the city and ask for help years ago?
[11-Year-Old Lived With Wild Dogs](http://www.channel3000.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-82830120010620-070638.html)
Boy Was Abandoned By Family
SANTIAGO, Chile, 8:55 a.m. EDT June 20, 2001 – An 11-year-old boy has been found living in a cave with a pack of dogs in Chile. Officials say that the boy’s parents abandoned him when he was 5 years old and he has been living in a cave with the stray dogs for two years after escaping from a care center.
The child, who has severe physical and psychiatric health problems, has been surviving by drinking the milk of a female dog and scavenging for food. When found, the boy was severely malnourished and unable to form words normally…
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### Author:  [@Cheese\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheese_Head)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2001, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503/2 "2001-06-20T18:31:23Z")
Oops! He was raised by dogs for two years, not six. Still a long time, though.
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### Author:  [@shell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shell)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2001, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503/3 "2001-06-20T19:57:02Z")
Feral children are unique and very, very rare. To answer your questions; he didn’t walk to the city because 1) he didn’t know how to get there, 2) didn’t trust humans (conjecture on my part, I’m assuming any parent who abandons their child has been a poor parent), and he will never be “ok” by most societal standards. For one thing, he will never develop any language past the point where he stopped learning it, and will most likely never learn how to use tools (to name just a few problems). Some links…
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A269840](http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A269840)
[http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/monkey/ihe/linguistics/LECTURE4/4feral.htm](http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/monkey/ihe/linguistics/LECTURE4/4feral.htm)
[http://www.halcyon.com/badams/feral.htm](http://www.halcyon.com/badams/feral.htm)
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### Author:  [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)
#### Post date: [June 20, 2001, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503/4 "2001-06-20T23:45:10Z")
Very sad indeed. A modern day version of Romulus and Remus, in a way.
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2001, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503/5 "2001-06-21T01:27:32Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by shell \*
> \*\*Feral children are unique and very, very rare. To answer your questions; he didn’t walk to the city because 1) he didn’t know how to get there, 2) didn’t trust humans (conjecture on my part, I’m assuming any parent who abandons their child has been a poor parent), and he will never be “ok” by most societal standards. For one thing, he will never develop any language past the point where he stopped learning it, and will most likely never learn how to use tools (to name just a few problems). Some links…
> [http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A269840](http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A269840)
> [http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/monkey/ihe/linguistics/LECTURE4/4feral.htm](http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/monkey/ihe/linguistics/LECTURE4/4feral.htm)
> [http://www.halcyon.com/badams/feral.htm](http://www.halcyon.com/badams/feral.htm)
>
> \*\*
\*\*
Well, perhaps he’ll be able to recover a fair amount of language. If I’m reading the article correctly, though he was abandoned by parents six years before, he lived in a care facility that he didn’t escape from until he was nine years old, so hopefully he had a significant vocabulary before that.
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### Author:  [@shell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shell)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2001, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503/6 "2001-06-21T04:54:45Z")
Not to dispute you **elfkin** , nor do I hope that it is the case, but according to the article in the OP, it states that the {i]boy was unable to form words normally\*. I take this to mean that his language will be severely disabled, i.e., that that particular window of opportunity has been shut for him. At best, he may constitute another good case study. Poor kid. What did he ever do to deserve such a fate? Even the dogs had more witherall than his parents did.
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### Author:  [@reprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/reprise)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2001, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/boy-raised-by-wild-dogs-for-six-years/69503/7 "2001-06-21T05:07:34Z")
Can you imagine how traumatic it must be for this child who chose to go it alone at age 9, to find himself returned to a care facility?