Feral Child Removed From Siberian Home

Natasha Mikhailova was kept locked in a room with dogs and cats for several years, causing her to behave like an animal. She does not speak, laps up her food and drink with her tongue, and walks on all fours.

Though living in filthy conditions in the same home as her father Viktor Lozhkin, 27, and grandparents in the Siberian city of Chita, child experts say she was treated as a family pet.

... the dogs sought to protect her. 'The child was living in absolute filthy conditions, the flat smells awful. There were a lot of animals, dogs and cats, and the girl was living with them.

'When we went into the flat we were almost knocked over by the stink.'

Natasha was wearing torn and soiled clothes.

A feral child is a human child who has lived away from human contact from a very young age, and has little or no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. Feral children are confined by humans (often parents), brought up by animals, or live in the wild in isolation.

Baldwin and his sister were kept in a locked room at night with furnace vents shut, and when released were forced to eat with their hands from a mat on the floor.  James Mills, the boyfriend of Baldwin's aunt who also lived in the house, declared that Baldwin's grandmother did not love him or his sister, and that they were purely a "dollars and cents" matter, as his grandparents received social assistance for their care.] On the evening of November 30, 2002, his grandmother called 911 to report that he was not breathing. Upon arrival, emergency workers noticed that his body was "covered in sores, bruises and abrasions". His weight at death was slightly less than his weight at his first birthday, almost five years earlier.

A list of isolated, confined and feral children