Given these similarities, Ujfalussy sought to learn more about the kinds of relationship that wolves, when socialized to humans, can have with their human caretakers. A primary aim of the study was to figure out what makes dogs so unique in their relationship with humans, and where their traits may have originated. This new research suggests the former may be true. This implied that only dogs are able to form a strong personal relationship to humans.
Over the years, this project has yielded over publications in peer-reviewed journals. But for the purposes of this study, participants with the Family Dog Project were asked to raise wolf puppies—and in a way that was identical to how they would normally hand raise dogs e. In the first experiment, eight wolves were exposed to visitors when in the company of other wolves, but for the second experiment, nine wolf puppies had to go it alone.
This was important especially in cases of stranger visits. However, in this situation the behaviour of [individual wolf pups were] not independent from the others, thus [making the] behaviour harder to interpret.
For this reason we designed the second, individual experiment, at a later age, when wolves were more confident. In the first experiment, the wolf pups were six months old, and in the second experiment they were tested at 12 months and 24 months.
To keep the interactions as consistent as possible, visitors were told to wear the same clothing, not wear any perfume or cologne, and not have anything in their pocket, along with a host of other control measures.
In both tests, the wolves approached visitors of all types readily and willingly. The month-old and month-old wolves likewise approached their foster-parents and close acquaintances with affection, but they were a bit apprehensive when approaching the other two visitor types. No aggressive behaviors were documented, but some of the wolf pups exhibited crouching and tail-tucking behaviors when approaching the strangers, which suggests they were a bit scared.
When the child was rescued, his mother had disappeared. Doctors have since tried to acclimate the toddler to human life, with some difficulty. He tried to get underneath and sleep there. He was very scared of adults," one doctor said. Raised by feral cats and dogs In , welfare workers were led to an unheated flat in a Siberian town where they found a 5-year-old girl they called " Natasha. Like her furry companions, Natasha lapped up food from bowls left on the floor.
She didn't know any human words and only communicated with hisses and barks. The father was nowhere to be found when authorities rescued the girl, and Natasha has since been placed in an orphanage. Raised by wild cats Argentinean police discovered an abandoned 1-year-old boy surrounded by eight wild cats in The cats reportedly kept the boy alive during the freezing winter nights by laying on top of him and even tried to lick the crusted mud from his skin.
The boy was also seen eating scraps of food likely foraged by his protective brood. Raised by wild dogs A year-old Chilean boy was found in to have been living in a cave with a pack of dogs for at least two years. In addition to my daughter, Myrtle, I share my home with a motley collection of rescued animals including dogs, cats, horses, chickens and pigs.
Certainly in some exceptional circumstances I can now appreciate how it might be possible for a human child to be cared for by a non-human surrogate. The canidae family, which include wolves, dogs, and foxes, are the classic surrogate carers for feral human children, featuring regularly in mythological as well as historical and ethnographic accounts. The alleged ability of these animals to raise human children has ancient antecedents in the legends surrounding the foundation of Rome when twins Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf.
The girls did not speak but howled , moved on all fours, and when they were taken to a local orphanage, preferred the company of the resident dogs to the other children. The persistence of isolated but documented instances of humans raised by or alongside animals continues to fuel our interest. Take John Ssebunya who, as a three-year-old child in Uganda in , ran away from home after witnessing his father murder his mother. Like primates, wolves and dogs are highly social and all members of the pack will participate in the care of puppies or cubs.
Wolves can also enter into friendships with animals who would, in other contexts, represent appropriate prey. An example dating back to but which did the rounds on social media recently told the story of an unlikely friendship which developed between a captive wolf and the decrepit donkey who was introduced into the enclosure as live prey.
According to some of the people involved in rescuing the pair from their incarceration, the wolf was terrified and the donkey had taken on the role of protector. In The Jungle Book stories, Mowgli is taught about how to survive in the wild by Baloo, the bear, and Bagheera, the leopard. While such a trio might seem unlikely friends, again there are examples of similar cross-species friendships.
Another arresting example, documented by wildlife filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert above , was the leopardess who they named Legadema, and her cub. Rather than killing it or ignoring it to eat her meal, Legadema picked up the infant when it reached out to her and carried it up a tree where she groomed it, carrying it higher each time it cried. However, there is a clear and well documented case of inter-species adoption, by primatologists , in which a baby marmoset was taken in and cared for into adulthood by a group of wild but provisioned capuchins.
The ability or even inclination to attempt to raise the young of another species suggests the possibility of inter-species communication and empathy. Legadema might just have been responding to an innate maternal instinct. A final case which brings us back to human children and canines was documented in Stories of feral children are widely disputed by academics and are also seen as sensationalist by popular audiences.
This is because the ability of other animals to raise human children calls many long-standing assumptions about human uniqueness and superiority into question. However, our knowledge of the capabilities of other animals is increasing rapidly.
As a result we are forced to recognise that they too are capable of many behaviours and actions previously thought to be exclusively human.
Also increasing are documented cases of animals from a variety of different species showing empathy towards vulnerable others. Or rescuing them from a range of different circumstances.
And so the stories of feral children become more plausible. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Majestic or problematic?
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