Chapter 4 Enlightenment of the wolf boy①

The seemingly impossible has happened: beasts of prey such as wolves, bears, and leopards can raise the young of human beings! The "Indian wolf boy" incident caused a sensation for a while, let us use this example to talk about what enlightenment it can give people. ① Originally published in "Fossil" magazine, No. 4, 1977. It was still in 1920, in a small town called Midnapole in the northeast of Kolkata, India, people often saw a "mysterious creature" appearing in the nearby forests, often at night, two of them walked on all fours The "human-like monster" followed behind the three big wolves.Later, people killed the big wolf, and finally found these two "monsters" in the wolf den, which turned out to be two naked girls.The older one is about seven or eight years old, and the younger one is about two years old.The two little girls were sent to the orphanage in Midnapole to be raised, and they were given names, the older one was Kamala and the younger one was Amala.Amala died the following year, and Kamala lived until 1929.This is the once sensational "wolf boy".

According to a book review published in the April 1976 issue of the American "Natural History" magazine, Singer, the discoverer of "Wolf Boys" and the host of the orphanage, wrote in his book "Wolf Boys and Savages"①, It records in detail how he and his wife worked together to transform the two wolf-like girls into humans, and the book also includes comments by American anthropologist Zinger. ①This book was published in 1947 and reprinted in 1966. There is more than one example of a beast like the Indian "wolf child" raising a human child. In 1875, the biological taxonomy written by the famous Swedish biologist Lin Nai recorded examples of wild animals raising children: for example, a child raised by a wolf was found in Hesse, Germany in 1344; A child raised with a bear in Lithuania; and a child fed by a sheep in Iran in 1672.It is said that there are also cases about "wolf children" recorded in ancient books of our country.

Recently, the comrades in the knowledge group of the editorial department of Shanghai "Youth Daily" also provided a very interesting information for this article-according to the Iraqi "Flute News" No. 339 report in 1978: A team of doctors and psychology professors is heading to Nairobi, Kenya's capital, to study a boy who once lived among monkeys. The boy was discovered four years ago by some villagers in Burundi.When found, he was completely naked, with most of his body covered with hair, crawling and jumping on all fours.The villagers caught him after a tense chase.He was first sent to a psychiatric hospital and now lives in a hospital in Kenya.

People named him "John".It has been established that he is now eight years old and was left alone after being separated from his family in the forest or after their entire family died.The monkeys were delighted to see him, raised him as their own, and protected him from the other animals. Within a period of time after being discovered, he learned to walk on two legs, and his temperament became docile because he returned to live among humans.However, he still can't speak.At first he only ate bananas, but gradually he got used to eating all kinds of food that people eat. Regarding the children who were abandoned and grown up in the forest, the most famous one is that during the French Revolution in 1797, a hunter found a 17-year-old boy from the forest. "The Beastly Child".This discovery has attracted widespread attention in the academic circles, and various scientific researches have been carried out.The Wild Boy died at 40.It is said that after a long period of artificial training, he was finally "domesticated" and "lost his animal behavior". The book "The Wild Boy of Aveyron" published in 1976 introduced the general situation of the discovery of this wild boy.

By the end of the 1950s, it was scientifically known that 30 children grew up in the wild, of which 20 were raised by wild beasts: 5 were raised by bears, 1 by leopards, and 14 by wolves. The famous one is the Indian "wolf boy" mentioned at the beginning of this article. People will ask: How did these "wolf children" live after returning to human society?How are they different from normal kids? According to records, the Indian "wolf boy" mentioned in this article walked on all fours when he was first discovered. When he walked slowly, he touched the ground with his knees and hands, and when he ran fast, he touched the ground with his palms and soles at the same time.They always prefer to be alone, hiding during the day and prowling at night.Afraid of fire, light, and water, they are not allowed to bathe them.They don't eat vegetarian food but eat meat. When eating, they don't need to hold it with their hands, but put it on the ground and tear it open with their teeth.Every day from midnight to three o'clock in the morning, they howled like wolves.They have no feelings, only know to look for food when they are hungry, and rest when they are full, and they do not take the initiative to take interest in others for a long time.But they soon learned to ask Singer's wife for food and water, like domestic dogs.It was only a year later, when Amala died, that Kamala was seen "in tears -- a tear from each eye."

According to research, when the seven or eight-year-old Kamala was first discovered, she only knew what a 6-month-old baby would know, and it took a lot of effort to make her adapt to the human way of life quickly. He can stand upright, and it took 6 years to learn to walk independently, but he still has to use all four limbs when running fast.He did not really learn to speak until his death: he only learned 6 words and understood a few simple sentences in 4 years, and only learned 45 words and barely learned a few sentences in 7 years.In the last 3 years, Kamala finally learned to sleep at night, and she was also afraid of the dark.Unfortunately, she died just as she was beginning to move toward the habits of a human being.Singer estimated that Kamala was about 16 years old when she died, but her intelligence was only equivalent to a child of three or four years old!

What does the case of "Wolf Boy" tell us? We know that anthropologists and psychologists often explore the formation process of human language, intelligence, and many social behaviors and habits through observations and experiments on higher apes, and the unexpected cases of human children living with animals provide a good example. There are rare opportunities to obtain valuable information through the observation and study of people in this special situation. First of all, the fact of the "wolf child" proves that human knowledge and talents are not innate and inborn, but the product of human social practice.People are not isolated, but highly socialized people. If they are separated from the human social environment and the collective life of human beings, they cannot form the inherent characteristics of human beings.And the human brain is the product of the long-term development of the material world. It does not automatically produce consciousness. Its raw materials come from the objective outside world and from people's social practice.Therefore, if this kind of social environment is lost from an early age, the unique habits of human beings, his intelligence and talents will not develop, just like when the "wolf boy" was first discovered: he has a mouth but can't speak, a brain but can't think, human The difference with the beast is also mixed up.

It should also be pointed out here that after all, "wolf children" themselves are descendants inherited by human beings for thousands of generations, so when "wolf children" return to human society, they will inevitably gradually recover their unique human habits.The Indian "wolf child" was almost human when she died, despite appearing to be a beast-like creature.The dogs raised by the Singers never learned to walk upright, let alone talk. Secondly, the case of "Wolf Child" illustrates the importance of childhood in human physical and mental development.In a person's life, childhood is a period of rapid development both physically and psychologically.For example, in terms of brain weight alone, the average newborn is about 390 grams, the brain weight of a 9-month-old baby is 560 grams, the brain weight of a child aged 2.5 to 3 years increases to 900-1011 grams, and that of a 7-year-old child is about 1280 grams. The average adult brain weighs about 1400 grams.This shows that children's brains develop rapidly under the influence of social environment.It was during childhood that he gradually learned to stand upright and speak, and learn to think with his brain, which laid the foundation for the development of intelligence and talents in the future. Because "wolf children" grew up among animals, they missed this kind of social practice opportunity, which made their intelligence level far inferior to that of normal children of the same age.

Thirdly, just as the history of ontogeny is a brief replay of its phylogenetic history, the growth process of the intelligence of human infants also reflects the development history of human intelligence in the long process from ape to man.Due to the lack of social practice activities, "wolf children" failed to learn to stand upright, and had to crawl on all fours, which hindered the use of their speech organs-the larynx and vocal cords, and could not speak clearly syllable language.More importantly, due to being separated from human society, Indian "wolf children" naturally do not have the need to produce language.In addition, they always crawl on all fours, with their faces facing down, and have to take in impressions from below. It is impossible to make their brains get more impressions than other four-legged animals, which fundamentally retards their intellectual development. The case of "Wolf Child" deeply reflects from the negative side that if there were no upright walking and language formation during the origin of human beings, it would be impossible for human ancestors to realize the transformation from ape to human, but the upright walking and language formation are inseparable. Start the most basic practical activity - labor.Therefore, the wolf boy gave people a profound enlightenment: without labor, it is impossible to realize the transformation from ape to man!