The beasts were literally their teachers – they walked, barked and acted like animals.

There have been recorded cases where young children, for various reasons, ended up somewhere in the wild. They were far away from humans, but they were then saved by wild animals, who embraced them as their cubs and cared for them for years.

They were raised by wolves, monkeys, dogs, goats and even birds, and these are some of the most shocking stories:

Oksana Malaya lived among dogs in Ukraine and slept in a dog house. She was eight years old when they found her in 1991. Alcoholic parents abandoned her, but she managed to stay alive thanks to the dogs. She was three years old when she was left on her own. The dogs helped her to warm up and they also shared their food, that they collected. As she had no contact with people, she didn’t know how to speak. Instead, she was only barking, showing her teeth and walking four-legged.

Chapman Marina was abducted in 1954. She was five years old. She lived in Colombia at the time. For some reason, the people who abducted her left her in the jungle to die. Alone and terrified, she approached a group of monkeys. These small and very intelligent monkeys took care of her for the next five years. They accepted her as one of them, feeding and protecting her from predators.

A hunter found her. But, unfortunately for her, he sent her to a brothel from which she escaped. Today she lives a normal family life, she is married and has two children. She wrote a book about everything she went through.

Daniel, a small boy, was found in 1990 in Peru after living with feral goats for eight years. He survived because he drank their milk and ate berries and carrots. He didn’t know the human language but he communicated well with goats and walked four-legged. As he didn’t walk upright for years, his bones developed abnormally. No one knew who the boy was, so they called him Daniel.

In 2007, a boy about ten years old was found in central Kaluga, Russia. He was found by villagers in the snow, at very low temperatures, in a burrow full of leaves and twigs. He didn’t speak, he was very scared and tried to bite the officer when he approached him. They took him to the hospital where they called him Lijoka. He acted and moved like a wolf. His nails looked like claws and his teeth were firm and sharp. They concluded that he lived with the wolves and sought food with them. It was more than obvious that he was very uncomfortable when he was surrounded by people – he escaped within 24 hours.

Vanja Judin of Russia was seven years old when he was found by a social worker in 2008 in a small apartment surrounded by many caged birds. His mother didn’t communicate with him, and he was isolated from other people, so the boy learned to chirp and scream like birds. He imitated them and didn’t understand the human language. All his life he lived surrounded by his mother’s birds. He was taken by the social service and placed in a rehab center.