First picture of neglected 'Mowgli' girl, 5, who was raised by dogs



This is the first picture of a five-year-old 'Mowgli' girl raised by dogs after her parents neglected her.



Natasha Mikhailova was kept locked in a room with dogs and cats for several years, causing her to behave like an animal. She does not speak, laps up her food and drink with her tongue, and walks on all fours.



Though living in filthy conditions in the same home as her father Viktor Lozhkin, 27, and grandparents in the Siberian city of Chita, child experts say she was treated as a family pet.

Under-developed: Natasha Mikhailova is actually five but looks more like a two-year-old

Lozhkin and the girl's mother Yana Mikhailova, 25, who has had no contact with her for two years, were both arrested on suspicion of neglect.



'They never let her out, we didn't know she existed,' said one neighbour.



'They have three really vicious and angry ones which they took for walks - but we never saw this child.'

The girl is the size of a two-year-old and was not registered with doctors or hospitals.



Natasha is now under close observation at a social rehabilitation centre.



Specialists are shocked at the way she jumps on people and plays dog games yet they say she is not mentally disabled.



'When I went out of the room, she jumped at the door and started barking, not just mewing or something, but barking,' said Nina Yemelchugova, chief of the centre.



'She eats well, she's got a good appetite but she can't behave at the table, she throws away the spoon and laps up food from the plate.'



Natasha shuns the company of other children and gets nervous when she hears unexpected noises.



Police chief Larisa Popova said officers entered the flat on Monday after a tip-off from neighbours.



'We had to fight to get this girl away,' she said.



Bleak: Natasha has been living at this apartment block where she appeared to have been treated like one of the family's dogs

Her father not there but the dogs sought to protect her. 'The child was living in absolute filthy conditions, the flat smells awful. There were a lot of animals, dogs and cats, and the girl was living with them.



'When we went into the flat we were almost knocked over by the stink.'

Natasha was wearing torn and soiled clothes.



Yekaterina Novikova, who lives nearby, said: 'These neighbours are unsociable, they only come out at night or early in the morning to avoid meeting with other locals and they never open the door.'

The mother, who has three other children living at another address, was arrested after going to police following local TV coverage of the girl being taken into care.



She claimed that Natasha had been 'kidnapped' by her father several years ago, but seems to have made no effort to get her back.



Experts hope Natasha can recover with intensive education.



She showed delight when an art teacher drew a picture of a flower.



The parents could face around three years in jail, according to Russian media reports.

Still from The Jungle Book (1942). Russian police have discovered a 'Mowgli' girl who, neglected by her parents, now barks like the dogs she lived with

This is the latest of a number of cases of feral children in the former Soviet Union.



Neglected by their parents, these youngsters sought love and solace from animals, usually dogs.



Psychologists call the phenomenon Mowgli Syndrome after the character in Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book.who was raised by wolves.



They blame the social dislocation and economic woes which followed the break-up of the USSR.



Feral children are the stuff of folklore all over the world and usually exhibit the behaviour of the animals with whom they have had closest contact.

