Who Are Feral Children - Essay Example

Feral Children

            For centuries, huge numbers of sociologists and experts have continued to put efforts to inquire about different human characteristics and behaviors that enabled human society to understand human nature in a significant manner. A brief analysis of such literature has indicated that the majority of sociologists have agreed on the term, “Man is a social animal” which indicates the notion of human learning that is not possible in isolation. Thus, studies have indicated that in humans, senses come along with birth; however, social surroundings and people play a significant role in guiding the behavior, attitude, and nature of the individuals in a society. In this regard, an individual observes his/her environment and the people in it and learns accordingly. This truly becomes evident and understandable in the cases of feral children that clearly indicate the impact of societal influences and environmental factors, which play a crucial role in the social learning of individuals in society.

            In particular, sociologists and experts have categorized individuals according to their social settings, in this regard; feral children (Newton, pp. 20-22) are those children that are unable to acquire human interaction during their early years. Thus, according to sociological observations, they go through the process of social learning in the presence of non-human subjects resulting in non-human characteristics and behaviors. This evidently supports the notion of “man is a social animal” (Candland, pp. 40-41), and due to the acquisition of non-human behaviors, feral children, although very rare in human history, have been successful in inclining sociologists and experts toward them.

            When talking about non-human subjects, experts have always found wild animals nurturing human children in absence of their human guardians, which itself is an interesting phenomenon, as reports have mostly considered wild animals as dangerous for the human race. However, this nurturing of children by wild animals has resulted in the creation of a new category of feral children that has continued to attract sociologists and anthropologists throughout human history. Analysis (Candland, pp. 23-29) has indicated that since the early 1600s, there have been only forty cases of feral children that indicates the extraordinary nature of such cases, still, sociologists believe that feral children have been very useful in facilitating sociologists in answering a number of queries related to human social learning that were unanswered before them.

            The paper will now attempt to include some examples of feral children that will be effective in understanding the impact of non-human or sub-human subjects and objects on the social learning of human children. One famous example is John Ssebunya of Uganda (Stanley & Cochran, pp. 24). In the year 1991, a villager found John with a group of monkeys in the jungle, and with the help of villagers, John was a member of the village again as some of the villagers identified him as one of the children of a villager who disappeared after killing John’s mother. In addition, villagers observed unusual things in John (Stanley & Cochran, pp. 24). Although he had black skin, his knees were all white as he used to walk on them. Secondly, John’s nails were very elongated and untidy, and uncommonly, some of his favorite foods were potatoes, roots, nuts, and cassava. It took a long time for villagers to humanize him, however, John continued to remember those five monkeys who taught him different things, traveled with him, and taught him to climb trees (Stanley & Cochran, pp. 24).

            Social Learning Theory (Ormrod, pp. 23-29) is an efficient theory to understand the abovementioned example of John Ssebunya. In particular, the theory (Ormrod, pp. 23-29) advocates the significant role of observations in the learning capability of humans and individuals. In this regard, social learning theories have indicated that when individuals observe someone or something, they begin to imitate the same after several sequences and after several social interactions. Children go through this process of observational learning in their formative years by imitating their mothers and fathers (Books, pp. 39-46), and it is the same with feral children that ended up imitating sub-human or non-human objects and subjects in their surroundings.

            Another example of a feral child was Oxana Malaya (Benzaquen, pp. 278-280) that came out as a feral child in the year 1991 in Ukraine, and her social interaction continued with only dogs for eight years. As a result, people found her doing the same habits as dogs, and thus, was unable to learn a human language perfectly. Experts (Benzaquen, pp. 278-280) believe that while living in a dog kennel, she began to imitate dogs’ habits and behaviors, and people found her barking and growling like wild dogs, and uncommonly, she acquired sharp smelling and hearing senses (Benzaquen, pp. 278-280) that indicate the cognitive impact of social learning on humans, especially in their formative years.