Manystrange children were found in the world They were calledwolf children. These children had grown up without any contact with humansociety. The three most mysterious of them that I am going to show about wereKamala, Viktor and Kaspar.12-year-old boy was captured. His movements resembledthe movements of wild animals. The boy was naked. The boy was small for hisage. He was deeply tanned and covered in scars and scratches from his life inthe forests.He could not speak and did not react even if shouted in his ear He refused to wear clothes, ripping them off whatever the weather.
He wouldonly eat familiar food such as potatoes or walnuts. He walked uncertainly.There was no connection between his mind and his body, and that he reflected onnothing, he had no imagination, no memory.Itard began by using a system ofrewards and punishments. At first, Itard rewarded any sound Victor made. Usingsimple painful method, over some months Itard taught Victor the names of somehousehold objects.
Itard tried every wayhe could think of to teach Victor language. Used letters, Itard would spell outwords like bring book and then demonstrate the action to Victor sothat he would understand. Victor, however, was strangely wooden even in the useof the limited vocabulary he had learnt - as if the words did not have anymeaning. When after five years of tuition, Victor s progress remained on verylow level, Itard had to admit defeat.Itard handed Victor over to the care ofhis housekeeper who faithfully cared for him until he died in his forties,house-trained but still half-wild, fearful and mute. Kamala was very similar.
The girl seemed to have notrace of humanness in the way she acted and thought. It was as if she had themind of a wolf. She tore off any clothes put on and would only eat raw meat.She only came awake after the moon rose. Kamala never smiled or showed anyinterest in human company.The only emotion that she showed was fear. Even hersenses had become wolf-like. Singh claimed her eyes were super sharp at night.Her hearing was also sharp - except, like Victor, she could not understand thehuman speech.
Gradually, Singh trained Kamala to accept other human ways,teaching her to eat normal food, to sleep with the other children and towelcome the company of fellow humans. However, when it came to teaching her tospeak, Singh struggled. With Kamala, progress was slow. After several moreyears, her vocabulary had increased.In addition, Kamala s words were onlypartly formed and her grammar stilted. But Kamala would only pronounce half theword.
Kamala s progress, at the age of 16, after nine years in the care of theorphanage, she still had the mind of a two and a half year old.A strange boy was found in Nurnberg. He was about 16 years old and when givenpaper and pencil, he wrote the name Kaspar Hauser. He was taken into custody.The custodian tookKaspar into his house and watched him. He had an innocent smile, but that was all his face would express, andhe did not know how to use his fingers at all. When he tried to walk, hestumbled like a toddler.
Kasper learned to talk in broken sentences.He could only eat bread and water other foodwould not stay with him. He did not seemto be aware of the difference between men and women at all. He was capable ofspeech, but it was mainly incoherent. He was able to tell the mayor that he hadlived in a cell in Nuremberg all his life and he did not know if it had beenday or night.
Kaspar showed some similarities with children who are learninglanguage, and had made considerable progress in reading and writing. However,he was not a wolf child that Kamala and Victor. He had been caged - thereforehe had learnt little about human society until he had been released at the ageof 16.The mostimportant feature shared by the children was that none of them could speak -and they all had tremendous difficulty learning to speak once captured.Thechildren could hear - and so were not simply deaf - but they did not understandhuman voice excluding Kaspar.
Almost equally surprising, the stories of wolfchildren suggest that walking upright is not an innate skill in human infants.They also were afraid of their captors. A final characteristic shared by thewolf children was that they seemed somehow to lack memory and self-awareness.They could make simple associations and learn to recognize familiar people andsituations.However, they seemed unable to reflect on the past or the future.Only one of them, Kaspar, was able to develop the ability to speak, write, andwas interested in human company.
He appeared to be the most successful inlearning how to talk, but Kaspar had not been raised in the wild. The earlyexperiences of children greatly influenced their capacity to learn later.