Recently, Russian social workers rescued a 7-year-old boy who has been raised as a pet bird by his mother. The boy was found in a tiny two-bedroom apartment filled with cages of birds.
He's called "bird boy" by Russian media, and here's why:
Social worker Galina Volskaya, who helped rescue the "bird-boy" from his home in Kirovsky, Volgograd, told Russian newspaper Pravda that he was treated like another pet by his 31-year-old mother.
Because she never spoke to him, Ms Volskaya explained, the boy's only communication was with the birds he was surrounded by. "When you start talking to him," she said, "he chirps."
Russian authorities say the child was not physically harmed but is suffering from "Mowgli syndrome", named after the Jungle Book character raised by wild animals, and cannot engage in any normal human communication.
Pravda reported: "(His mother) had her own domestic birds and fed wild ones. (She) neither beat him nor left him without food. She just never talked to him. It was all the birds that communicated with the boy and taught him birds' language.
"He just chirps and when realising that he is not understood, starts to wave hands in the way birds winnow wings."
You don't see the beauty in raising the boy as a bird?
It's almost poetic.
Sad though it was to have been at the expense of a normal childhood, it's still something very interesting! And I wonder if it's only the language (vocal and body) that he picked up from the birds. How about eating habits, or the way he walks?
And I think it would be very cool if he never forgot how to do this. That when he grows up after living a life with human interaction et al, he still retains his ability to communicate with birds. I wouldn't mind being able to do that..
Although that it is unusual that his mother never spoke to him at all. Pet owners talk to their pets like they can understand what they're saying! And here she is, not saying a word at all? .. Strange.
But then again, raising your son as a pet bird is already lightyears beyond strange.
It seems like it's more unfortunate that it took so long for authorities to uncover this than anything else.
I know what you mean and it's true, however, it's a big deal when it just happens that a human life is affected by it. Sure, she may have been unstable (or not) but the fact is that one persons action has undoubtedly caused a child to grow up like this. And yes...it's sad that the authorities got to this late as they have but maybe through some extensive psychological treatment and some good human contact this boy can regain a childhood he's lost.
There is the case of the girl (can't remember where from) who grew up among dogs who through some steady treatment was able to live in society again.
Unfortunately, psychologists are gonna be all over this poor boy when they (and the police) should be all over his mother.
This whole this bothers me on so many levels.
Also there was another boy who grew up with dogs in Ukraine, as well as a boy found in the forest in France (I think that was the first documented case, too bad I forgot his name), and then there was this girl from Los Angeles that was horribly abused by her parents and kept in a dark room in a diaper etc until she was 10 or 11.
Yea, I wouldn't worry about Russian society Bonnie, all humans are capable of the same thing.