Nature or Nurture?

[dranger7070]

Do you think it's possible for a child to be able to survive, presumably raised by animals? If such a child did exist and a family took the child in, would it be possible to teach him/her to be like a human again?

FeralChildren.com | Kamala and Amala, the Wolf Girls of Midnapore

Scroll down a bit to read the whole story of Kamala and Amala, two 'wolf girls.'

There are other stories and I think its pretty trippy. Idk what do you guys think?

[a500lbgorilla]

'Feral Children' made me laugh.

[Stacks]

Rilla seems to act just fine.. For an individual raised and raped by gorillas as a child.

[a500lbgorilla]

It is both true that I was raised by apes, and that their words for love and rape are the same.

[wufwugy]

Humans raised by wolves would die about 100% of the time. They wouldn't be able to feed, clothe, shelter, protect themselves, or keep together with the group. They would die at any stage of development, really

[dranger7070]

What about monkeys? Other types of animals can be considered in this.

[wufwugy]

Possibly with gorillas, but definitely not with tree dwellers. The alpha female would have to take it on herself to nurture the child (not entirely implausible), and she would have to have enough pull to keep others from killing him.

I have no clue about the nutrient content of gorilla breast milk, or if a human baby could even suckle, but it's probably good enough, and mothers nurturing other species isn't unheard of.

An unavoidable problem is shelter and clothing, though. At some point, a human child raised by gorillas would succumb to something environmental. Even beyond that, it's not like the gorillas will teach the human how to hunt or gather correctly. I'm also not sure of the geographical landscape, but I don't think there's any place in the world where a child could be raised in the wild without human adults where he wouldn't get picked off by a predator at some point

Humans are extremely weak and pack oriented. We require a shitload of teaching and companionship in order to just survive. The kinds of humans that survive alone in the wilderness were raised by literally the most capable humans alive, and have a lifetime of the correct practice and teaching to show for it

Besides, it doesn't even make sense that on the one hand we have survival of the fittest, yet on the other hand an organism could survive in an environment for which it is ridiculously unadapted. I guess it could happen since all things have a greater than zero probability or something, but beyond that it's not reasonable

[Vinland]

If Humans get the child from wolves/gorillas past a certain age (I think its around 5) then you can somewhat assimilate them but they will almost never master the english language.
I saw a special on it.....children need to start speaking early or else they lose the ability to learn it forever.

[NobleTruths]

In the case you reference, Rev. Singh was eventually found to be a fraud, altho those two girls definitely had profound Mental Retardation. That case is well known in the medical community.

That being said, nature AND nurture play critical roles in psychosocial development. In addition, there are many developmental milestones that need to be met within certain chronological periods, or else those milestones will always remain markedly impaired - speech being one of them.

More relevant to our times are the children adopted from orphanages where severe social and psychological deprivation existed. The earlier a child was placed in an institution like that, and the older that child was when finally adopted out, the more profound their social impairment AND the less amenable to therapeutic change.

An interesting experiment was done 60's involving kittens. New born kittens were raised in a box which was painted on the inside with vertical stripes. No other shapes or directional lines were presented to the kittens. After six weeks of age, the kittens was placed in an environment with horizontal lines. They were unable to see the horizontal lines because that area of the visual cortex did not develop. They would walk right into the walls painted with horizontal stripes.

Nature and nurture....both are critical.

[Juked07]

Interesting.. though I don't see the relation to the nature vs nurture issue.

[oskar]

There's a Truffaut movie about a child who was abandoned in the wild - not raised by animals, but surviving by itself.... Supposedly it was based on a true story. It's called "L'enfant Sauvage", if you want to look into it.
Another story that might not be so well known elsewhere is that of Kaspar Hauser - he was raised devoid of any human contact chained up in a cellar and released when he was in his mid or late teens. There's quite a bit of material you can find on that case.

Neither could speak when they were discovered, and both were taught successfully afaik.

Both accounts were recorded when people thought of the anvil as a technological revolution, so take it with a grain of salt.

[dranger7070]

Lol I do funny things when I'm high.

[NobleTruths]

Interesting.. though I don't see the relation to the nature vs nurture issue.

"Nature" refers to our genetic capabilities and how much that impacts our development. We all have the genetics for speech (some of us are just more eloquent ). "Nurture" refers to the environment within which we are raised, and how much that influences us.

If it was all nature, then even a child never exposed to speech should be able to learn to speak when taught at a later period. Or a kitten never exposed to horizontal lines.