Feral Children and the Human-Animal Divide

Undoubtedly, the lack of normal developmental stimuli has a devastating impact on the development of the human brain. Feral children would not be classified as human using any of the traditional criteria.

However, generally speaking, we now accept as human someone who is clearly genetically human, regardless of their intelligence, abilities or skills.

Homo Ferus

But this position has only been arrived at after centuries of debate, during which Linnaeus, in the first serious attempt at scientific classification of the natural world, classified feral children (homo ferus) as distinct from home sapiens, and appeared to treat chimpanzees or orang-utans as also belonging to the human species (homo troglodytes).

Presumably, Linnaeus supposed that feral children were some strange type of creature that humans rarely encountered:

Classification today

Today, we keep re-defining the criteria we use to differentiate humans from other animals, as we discover bit by bit that animals are a lot cleverer than we thought: they can communicate, and use tools.

One of the latest theories to distinguish humans from other animals is the theory of mind, the ability to understand that others have their own personal thoughts. But it wasn't long before biologists started to find evidence of theories of mind in many other mammels, and now even ravens.

We may accept that whatever their developmental deficiencies, feral children are indeed human, but what if a new primate were discovered? How would we classify it? Could it be human? This is one of the questions Steeves explores in The Familiar Other and Feral Selves: Life at the Human/Animal Boundary.

Physical differences

Linnaeus' list of feral children, whom he famously described as "Tetrapus, mutus, hirsutus" (four-footed, mute (dumb), hairy), was, however, somewhat inaccurate and ill-researched. He started with a list of six children in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae in 1758, and expanded this to nine entries (10 children, listing the two Pyrenees children as one entry) in the 12th edition of 1766, adding the Bamberg and Kranenburg children, and Memmie LeBlanc.

However, in 1789, 11 years after the death of Linnaeus, Johann Friedrich Gmelin, editor of the 13th edition of Systema Natura, removed the individual cases. For much more on this, see Rewriting the Savage: The Extraordinary Fictions of the "Wild Girl of Champagne".

In subsequent centuries, attempts to distinguish humans from animals have generally centred around characteristics or abilities that feral children also do not possess, such as the ability to walk, talk and use tools.

Mental differences

When it comes to the mind, feral children do not think about either themselves or others in the way most humans do (see Autism and Feral Children).

Through the work of Dr Bruce Perry, among others, we also know that without the stimulation that takes place in a normal childhood, the brains of feral children are smaller and malformed, such is the impact of the lack of development.

The chapter in Savage Girls and Wild Boys about Wild Peter discusses Defoe's quandary over whether Peter had a soul; this theme is also the subject of Newton's chapter in At the Borders of the Human: Beasts, Bodies and Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period edited by Erica Fudge.

Homo Floresiensis

Homo Floresiensis is a tiny, hairy species of humans that existed on the island of Flores, probably as recently as 12,000 years ago or less. Could other similar species remain to be found, isolated on islands or in rainforests? Would we consider members of the species Homo Floresiensis to be human, if they were found today?