Sometimes animals are very good to humans. I am not talking about pets, but wild animals. We know there have been quite a few people who were saved from drowning and shark attack by dolphins. These mammals are doing this for a reason, but that reason puzzles scientists. There has been a question concerning the awareness of animals for quite some time, but when we look at these dolphins there is no doubt they recognize the fact these humans were in trouble and helped them. This raises another question, what exactly do they know, if anything, about death? Are they helping humans because they don’t want them to get injured or because they don’t want them to die? If either of these reasons is true it demonstrates awareness and reasoning. It does make one wonder if it is only humans the dolphins rescue or do they do the same for other animals? The truth is dolphins have been known to help animals. They have been seen saving dogs. There was a case where a police woman fell into the ocean with her dog and dolphins not only save her from drowning, but also the dog.

I have brought this topic up for a reason and it has to do with feral children.  Feral children are children who for some reason are abandoned and grow up in the wild. In the world there are many of these cases and sometimes the children are only infants and you have to wonder how can an infant human baby survive if abandoned in a jungle or the woods? The answer to this question is startling. Many different types of animals have been known to adopt children and raise them. There are many amazing stories about this and I thought I might speak about a few.

There is a woman who now lives in Western Europe who wrote about her life story and it is sad, but also shows some animals have a lot of good in them. She was kidnapped at a tender age. It is believed the kidnappers did it for a ransom and when they didn’t get it they abandoned her in a South American jungle. She was very young and surely would have died if it was not for the fact a band of monkeys took care of her and taught her how to catch birds and rabbits to eat. They were capuchin monkeys and were known for having done this previously for others. She lived with the monkeys for five years, but then a group of hunters found her and sold her to a brothel. She managed to escape and was living in the streets when again she was captured and made a slave.  She managed to get away and make her way to Europe. Why did the monkeys treat her as one of their own? Did they feel compassion for her situation? It would seem so, which just reinforces the fact animals have feelings just as we do, but they may not express them the same way we do, after all some animals are pure predators and may consider us as a meal.

There was a boy who lived in South America. The poor kid was abandoned by his young mother and the authorities put him in an institution for children. It must have been hell in there, because the first chance he had, he escaped. He was about 10 years old and found a cave which had a pack of dogs living in it. The dogs became his family and completely adopted him. He would go out with the dogs and look for food. After years he was spotted by a policeman who caught him. He barked like a dog at him and the policeman found he was suffering from severe depression. They found out later he could speak, but had chosen not to. He knew he was human and not a dog, but he wanted to return to his dog family. What does one do when they find someone like this who insists on returning to an animal family? It could be he would fit in better with them and be much happier than be yanked out of their presence and dumped back into civilization and put in some institution again.

The case which I am going to talk about I have mentioned before and again it is about dogs. Any dog owner knows some dogs have very soft hearts and they proved this with Ivan Mishukov. He had run away from home when he was very young, perhaps 4 years old and found a pack of wild dogs. He found food for them and they took him in as one of their own, but after a while they promoted him to the leader of the pack. Three times police captured him and three times the dogs rescued him. The dogs loved him and he loved them. He gained this emotion while living with the dogs. For him the dogs were his family and the most important part of his life and when that was taken away it made him miserable even though those who captured him thought they were helping him.

One poor kid was sold to a goat tender at 7 years of age. The goat tender lived alone in the mountains. He had been constantly beaten by his step mother, so he was better off. The goat tender must have died, because it wasn’t long before he found himself alone. He wandered off and found a cave with wolf cubs and played with them and fell asleep. He woke up when the mother came back with meat for the cubs. When she was feeding them he tried to take a piece and the wolf pawed him. When she was finished feeding the cubs she gave him some meat and licked him. He also tells the story about a snake which would follow him everywhere and share food he found. He lived with animals for about 12 years and they treated him very well.

In 2008 police found a one year old boy and he was surrounded by cats, lots of them. When the police headed toward the boy, the cats began to get aggressive. It turned out the boy had survived a particularly harsh winter because the cats had protected him. They kept their bodies on top of him to keep him warm. As incredible as this sounds, they would bring him scraps of food. His father had been looking for him and one has to wonder how such a young child gets away from a parent, even a homeless one.