The dietary habits of feral children

One of the more intriguing aspects of feral children is the sometimes very bizarre eating habits that they have acquired.

"...the most violent of her temptations was to drink the blood of a living animal. She herself confessed to me that when she saw a child, she was tormented by this desire." (Memmie LeBlanc) Read more about Memmie LeBlanc

Raw meat

Children brought up by animals usually adopt the diet of their foster family, and that usually means raw meat. This results in a dislike of any other foodstuff, including cooked meat and any form of vegetable matter. In fact, they develop a real craving for raw meat, and several are recorded as having an overpowering desire for fresh blood.

Feral children have often failed to thrive when "rescued" and returned to civilisation, which is not altogether surprising for a number of reasons, but one probable cause is failure to provide them with the diet to which they had become accustomed. In many instances, it just wouldn't have occurred to the captors to provide raw meat.

Kamala and Amala were extremely keen on raw meat. Woe betide any chicken that dared roam anywhere near Kamala: it would be caught, killed and eaten, there and then.

Dietary problems

Nutritional inadequacies are probably the cause of some of the more bizarre physical manifestations reported in feral children, including the green colour of the Green Children of Woolpit and body hair.

Although it seems likely that cases of hairy children (hypertrichosis) are causes by dietary deficiencies, occurrences of this phenomenon are roughly equally split between wolf-children (whom we assume ate a meat diet) and vegetarians.

Drink

One puzzling aspect of the case of John Ssebunya is that he told Sally Magnusson of The Scotsman that he didn't drink while in the forest. Not rainwater: nothing at all.

Rather than casting doubt on his story, for Magnusson this confirmed it. Who would invent such an improbably lie? And in fact, the vervet monkeys that John spent his time with never do drink. They obtain all the liquid they need from fruit.

"It was as if they had the minds of wolves. They tore off any clothes put on them and would only eat raw meat." (Kamala and Amala) Read more about Kamala and Amala

Vegetarians

Children who fend for themselves in the wild have usually had the ingenuity to develop some means of sustenance. Generally speaking, those who survive on their own wits are forced to adopt a vegetarian diet of roots, fruits, grass and leaves, but Memmie LeBlanc also caught fish, frogs and other small creatures.

Manners

Dainty eating manners are not something that children learn from wild creatures. Several children are reported as seizing a living fowl, tearing it to pieces and eating it. Kamala and Amala would quite literally wolf their food down without swallowing it.