Can a Boy Raised by Wolves Learn to Speak Human Language? It Depends.

The legend of Victor of Aveyron’s early childhood sounds like something straight out of "The Jungle Book”: The story goes that he was raised by wolves until early adolescence, never learning to communicate or function in society, until the day he decided to join the village next to the woods that had been his home.

Victor of Aveyron was spotted for the first time on the edge of the woods in 1794 but stayed hidden for another three or four years until some hunters noticed what looked to be a naked child, about six years old, watching them from the treeline. Victor froze as they approached, maybe instinctively feeling what we call “stranger danger,” so he got a late start running back into the woods. They caught up with him just as he scrambled up a tree and were able to pull him down. His stay in the village didn’t last long though; he was placed with a little old lady but ran off after a week and the villagers would occasionally see him over the next three years, often wearing the increasingly tattered clothes he’d been given during his short stay in town.

Nine times, the villagers tried to capture him again when he would come out of the woods, but they were never successful. On occasion, they would wake up in the morning to find that a few loaves of bread had been stolen from one of the houses, and they’d know that they’d missed another chance to catch the wild child from the woods. Then, just a few days after New Year’s Day 1800, Victor walked out of the woods and into the village, apparently ready to join society.

Victor joined the village in 1800.

A few people came to meet Victor in hopes that he was their long-lost child, but no one claimed him. The gossip around town was that he was the unwanted illegitimate child of a local nobleman. A physician named Itard who got to know the boy quite well hypothesized later that Victor “lived in an absolute solitude from his fourth or fifth to almost his twelfth year, which is the age he may have been when he was taken in the Caune woods” (Itard).

Since Victor had run away when placed with the elderly widow the first time he lived in the village, this time the villagers placed him in the only institution that seemed even remotely related to his unique situation: the Institute for Deaf-Mutes. It didn’t take a lot of observation to realize that Victor was neither deaf nor mute, so this predictably turned out to be a bad idea, but there was no such thing as special education or even mental hospitals for children. 

A doctor named Itard took Victor into his care.

They were running out of options, and an asylum was looking to be the only choice, despite being considered disgusting and cruel even by contemporary...

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