List of fictional feral children

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Feral children, children who have lived from a young age without human contact, appear in mythological and fictional works, usually as human characters who have been raised by animals. Often their dual heritage is a benefit to them, protecting them from the corrupting influence of human society (Tarzan), or permitting the development and expression of their own animal nature (Enkidu), or providing access to the wisdom and lore by which animals survive in the wild (Mowgli).

In most tales, the child is lost (Tarzan) or abandoned (Romulus and Remus) before being found and adopted in a chance encounter with a sympathetic wild animal. In some stories, the child chooses to abandon human society (Where the Wild Things Are) or refuses to enter society altogether (Peter Pan). The child usually returns to civilization, but may decide to return again to life in the wild (Tarzan). In some cases, they find themselves trapped between worlds unable to enter entirely into either human society or animal society (Mowgli).^[1]

In mythology, folklore, and ancient literature

• Enkidu, raised by unspecified beasts, becomes the friend of the hero Gilgamesh. (see also Epic of Gilgamesh)
• Iranian
  Zaal, the mythical hero of Iran, raised by Simurgh, a very large and wise bird which darkens the sky when flying, said to be related to the phoenix
  .
• In
  desert island and becomes an autodidactic philosopher
  .
• In
  theologian
  .
• According to American folklore, Pecos Bill was raised by coyotes.
• In Greek mythology, Atalanta was raised by a she-bear after her father abandoned her in a forest until the day she was found by kindly hunters.
• In Mongolian Oirat mythology, the hero Jangar is taught to roar by a tiger, taught to hunt by an eagle, taught to run by antelope, suckled by she-wolves, and fed fruit by deer.
• In a Polish fairy tale, Waligóra and Wyrwidąb were two warrior and dragonslayer brothers, who were brought up in the woods by a wolf and a bear.

In modern prose

• In 1879, Albert Robida created The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul. Saturnin Farandoul a child raised by orangutans who becomes king of the apes.
• H. Rider Haggard's 1889 novelette, "Allan's Wife," features the antagonist Hendrika, a white Boer child who was stolen and raised by baboons. She is later rescued and "civilized" by an English family, but she retains baboon-like behavior and the ability to communicate with baboons.
• An early modern example of a feral child comes from Rudyard Kipling's 1894 short story collection The Jungle Book. His protagonist Mowgli is raised by wolves and becomes the ruler of the jungle.
• Peter Pan, created by J. M. Barrie in 1902, is a boy who fled to the magical Neverland and refused to grow up.
• The Blue Lagoon, created by H. de Vere Stacpoole in (1908) tells the story of two English children, a boy and a girl, stranded on a deserted tropical island in the Polynesia.
• Tarzan, of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes (1912), has become an iconic hero of novels, comic strips, and motion pictures.
• The German trilogy Die Höhlenkinder (1918-1920) by Alois Theodor Sonnleitner is about two children who grow up in a hidden area cut off from the outside world without adults, after they had to flee because their grandmother was accused to be a witch. Later they have a son who finds his way back.
• Shasta of the Wolves (1919) by Olaf Baker, in which a Native American boy is raised by a wolf pack in the Pacific Northwest.
• The Garden of God (1923), a sequel of The Blue Lagoon which features a new British child couple, descendants of the British child couple from the previous book generated by incest who live a new adventure on the same Polynesian island.
• Jungle Born (1924) by John Eyton, in which a boy raised by rhesus macaques in northern India inadvertently saves a teenage girl from her abusive father.
• The House Without Windows & Eepersip's Life There
  (1927) by Barbara Newhall Follett, in which Eepersip runs away from home to live in idyllic Nature (successively, a meadow, the sea, and, finally, the mountains).
• Bijeli jelen / "White Deer" (1947) by
  geese. She is adopted by deer and soon befriends most animals in the forest. Her main antagonist is a wolf, while her closest ally is a white deer. After growing up she becomes a powerful forest-warrior who helps both animals and humans
  living in the forest.
• Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding, tells the story of a large group of British schoolboys who have survived a plane crash and are now stranded on a deserted island. They gradually experience social disintegration due to strong differences in their opinions on how to survive their current situation and a severe descent into savagery.
• My Side of the Mountain (1959) by Jean Craighead George tells the story of an overwhelmed and determined 12-year-old boy named Sam Gribley who decides to leave his family and his life in New York City behind to live independently in the wilderness of the Catskill Mountains.
• In Howard Fast's 1960 short story "The First Men", a tale of a wolf-child starts off the series of letters.
• In
  Martians on Mars, as he returns to Earth
  in early adulthood. The novel explores his interaction with — and eventual transformation of — human culture.
• In
  Space Mowgly
  ), a human from Earth, Piere Semyonov, has been raised by an alien non-humanoid civilization after his parents' spaceship crashed onto an uncharted planet. After his discovery by the Terran scientists, several attempts to integrate him back to human society were undertaken, but all were in vain.
• The theme of young adolescent runaways seeking shelter with wild animals and learning their ways is seen in novels such as the Newbery Medal-winning novel Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George (1972).
• Philip Jose Farmer
  's anthology Mother Was A Lovely Beast: A Feral Man Anthology, Fiction And Fact About Humans Raised By Animals (1974) collects several stories of fictional feral children.
• Merlin lives in the forest for a year nearly as well as its natives, until a falconer
  who is used to domesticating animals captures him and begins the long and difficult task of educating him in human behavior.
• In Karen Hesse's The Music of Dolphins (1996), a young girl called Mila is found after having been raised by dolphins for over a decade. In the book, Mila is taken to a clinic with other undomesticated human young, none of whom adapt to mainstream humanity as easily as she does. At the end of the book, Mila returns to the dolphin pod, showing her rejection of human society.
• In the "Firekeeper Saga" starting with
  Through Wolf's Eyes (2001) by author Jane Lindskold
  , the family of a young girl named Firekeeper and her colony are killed by a fire, and she is the only survivor. She is then taken in by the "Royal Wolves" who speak their own language with gestures and signals. Because Firekeeper had already learned a human language before going to live with the wolves, she was able to return to human society and became a valuable asset to the royalty, but she found that humans were not as noble as the wolves she loved as family. Firekeeper is always barefoot and tends to throw fits whenever she is told to wear shoes. It is her greatest wish to become a wolf herself and leave the humans behind again.
• Wild Angel (2001) by
  gold-rush-era California
  .
• World War Z by Max Brooks contain many references to feral children - in this case, children who were separated from normal humanity at some point during the zombie war, and were forced to live in the wild, contending not just with the problems of survival but also the hazard posed by the walking dead. The novel suggests they formed a kind of rudimentary social or "pack" structure with basic tool-using abilities, and in most cases were capable of being slowly rehabilitated.
• In the 2006 book Dogboy by Victor Kelleher, a young boy is abandoned at birth by his mother and is raised by a half domestic dog in a litter of puppies. He is later brought back to a nearby human settlement by the dog, searching for a home with her owner once again, and her only surviving pup but is rejected as an abomination.
• Little Bird concerns a girl kidnapped as a toddler by a mute
  and held captive until the age of twelve.
• In 2009
  Eva Hornung's novel Dogboy, set in Moscow
  , tells the story of two feral children who live with a pack of dogs. One of the children was abandoned at the age of 4 and the other was brought to the lair as a baby by the dominant female in the pack. The children eventually come under the notice of two scientists working in a centre that rehabilitates abandoned children.
• The Dictator's Moustaches, a 2009 Italian novel by Anna Russo, concerns an abandoned baby rescued and brought up by dogs.
• Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah concerns a young girl who appears out of the forest, with no information as to her origins. She is called 'wolf girl'; she is cared for and eventually loved by fallen psychologist Julia.
• In Victor Robert Lee's^[2] 2013 novel Performance Anomalies,^[3] protagonist Cono 7Q becomes an orphan as a young boy in northeast Brazil, surviving alone in the forest by hunting small animals.
• In the Steven Bauer book Satyrday, Derin was raised by a satyr named Matthew, after an evil great horned owl killed his family and destroyed his clan.

In comics

• "The Wild Wonders" in the 1970s British comic book series
  Valiant
  are two boys lost on a Scottish island and raised in a normal environment, developing their own language. Returned to human civilization at about a decade old, they become superb athletes and enjoy many comic adventures.
• In "
  Buster
  ), the hero of the title was abandoned on a remote island as a baby, implausibly learned how to breathe underwater and to communicate with aquatic fauna, and grew webbed fingers and toes.
• Goodall also created "Kid Chameleon" (1970–1972) in Cor!! Raised by reptiles in the Kalahari Desert after the murder of his parents, Kid Chameleon wears a suit of lizard scales that can change color to camouflage him like his namesake the chameleon.
• The
  Regis Loisel and Philippe Sternis, features a girl who is raised by a bear and taught wisdom by a blind old eagle in the French Pyrenees, the bear having named her after the mountains without the "s". This story has won critical acclaim and has been translated into German and Dutch, but has also drawn some criticism over the girl's nudity
  .
• Little Dee is a webcomic where a prevocal human who was lost in a forest is adopted by a bear, dog, and vulture. The strip contains purely fantastic elements (the characters live in a cave but occasionally fly planes or cook food) and focuses more on the natives and their issues of handling a human.
• In DC Comics' Elseworlds story Superman: The Feral Man of Steel (1994), Kal-El (Clark Kent) is raised by wolves in 19th century India, in an homage to The Jungle Book, until he is discovered by an expedition led by Lex Luthor and Lois Lane and brought back to Britain.
• In the Marvel Comics universe, a Tarzan-inspired character Ka-Zar is raised by a sabertooth tiger named Zabu in the Savage Land, a vast tropical jungle hidden from the world in the depths of Antarctica. He goes on to have many adventures including features in the popular X-Men series where he also has some encounters with Spider-Man.
• The Quality Comics hero Black Condor, was a boy raised in Mongolia by highly intelligent condors, gains the improbable power of flight and later becomes a superhero. Secret Origins #21 revealed that Condor's flight ability was due to a radioactive meteorite near the condors' nest.
• Holyoke Publishing's hero Cat-Man was orphaned at a young age and raised by Burmese tigers. He adapted to life in the wild by developing super-strength, enhanced vision, and other talents which served him well when he returned to the US and became a superhero.
• The Hexagon Comics hero Zembla was a boy raised by lions.
• David Cain to be the perfect assassin, taught to read body language
  instead of learning human speech and isolated from anyone who might talk to her until she was eight years old. In her initial appearances she was unable to speak, capable of picking up combat skills easily and predicting opponents' moves in a fight simply from the way they stood but unable to understand spoken language, but has since been shown to have learned how to speak and think in English with help from a psychic 'rewiring' her brain to accept language.
• Trolls de Troy
  features a human girl named Waha, who was accidentally raised by Trolls from infancy.
• In the Japanese manga Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Inosuke Hashibara was raised by wild boars, wearing the hide of his boar mother after her death.
• In
  cave hyenas
  .

In film

These films have fiction and two are based on true stories:

• King of the Jungle, a 1933 film directed by H. Bruce Humberstone and Max Marcin features a three-year-old boy (Ronnie Cosbey) who is raised by a lioness after both of his parents die in a plane crash flying over Africa. He grows up to become known as Kaspa the Lion Man (Buster Crabbe). When money-obsessed businessman, Neil Forbes (Sidney Toler), arrives in Africa, his men manage to capture the lion man and his loyal feline companions. Now, as the rare specimens are on display at a circus, Kaspa begins to feel nostalgia for his beloved forest, and nothing can stop him from returning to his roots.
• Tarzan Finds a Son!, a 1939 film directed by Richard Thorpe features Tarzan (played by Johnny Weissmuller) and Jane (played by Maureen O'Sullivan) raising an orphaned baby boy who has survived a plane crash. During the next five years, the child, now named Boy, (played by Johnny Sheffield) experiences both the joys and dangers of jungle life under Tarzan's guidance.
• zoologist Paul Gordon (played by Donald Woods) who resides in a jungle cabin alongside his wife Ruth Gordon (played by Marjorie Lord) and their native housekeeper Nona (played by Elena Verdugo) during a temporary stay Africa. David meets Bomba the Jungle Boy (played by Johnny Sheffield) after the latter frees some animals captured by the child's father and soon befriends him. Bomba gives David his very own leopard skin loincloth to wear and teaches him the ropes of vine swinging as well as methods of jungle survival. He looks upon David as the little brother he never had and who also fulfills his time of solitude. On his part, David fully embraces the carefree and liberating jungle lifestyle (due to it being different and much more exciting than his life in the city) and comes to worship Bomba as a hero and a role model. Unfortunately, he also has a very hard time convincing his parents of his new friend's existence. Having never seen him, they initially believe Bomba to be either an imaginary friend or a myth
  .
• Lord of the Flies, a 1963 film directed by Peter Brook and based on the novel by William Golding. A second film adaptation of the story was directed by Harry Hook and released in 1990.
• Mara of the Wilderness, a 1965 film directed by Frank McDonald features Mara Wade (played by Lori Saunders) who was raised by wolves in the Alaskan wilderness (ever since her parents were killed in a bear attack) where she lives barefoot and only wearing a fur dress. Mara later befriends an anthropologist named Ken Williams (played by Adam West) who is interested in teaching her what is in the world. Ken also discovers that she is hunted by a ruthless carnival worker named Jarnagan (played by Theo Marcuse).
• jean shorts for him using his t-shirt
  .
• James B. Clark and based on the novel by Jean Craighead George. It stars Teddy Eccles
  as Sam Gribley.
• L'Enfant Sauvage, a 1970 French film directed by François Truffaut, is based on the true story of a nude feral boy (played by Jean-Pierre Cargol) discovered living in the forests of 18th century France. A doctor (played by François Truffaut) who is a deaf specialist tries to socialize the boy who cannot speak. Based on the account of Dr. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard
  .
• dancing and swimming nude together on a beach.^[4]
• Zindy el Niño de los Pantanos (Zindy the Swamp Boy), a 1973 Mexican film directed by René Cardona. Zindy (played by René Cardona III) lives in the swamp with his grandfather (played by René Cardona). They have a great life full of adventures: catching turkeys, fighting crocodiles, swimming in a river, and hunting a cougar just to name a few. But it's not the life the grandfather would have chosen for Zindy. But because he's wanted for murder, he's forced to raise his grandson in seclusion. During a trip to the nearest village for supplies, his grandfather doesn't return and Zindy is left on his own. His only companion is Toribio, his chimpanzee. Can he survive?
• On the 1977 Mexican "clone of Tarzan" film called El Rey de los Gorilas also known as El Simio Blanco (means The King of Gorillas and also known as The White Ape) directed by René Cardona Jr., a baby survived in the canoe that drifted away from the "Black Forest", the territory of the fearsome cannibal tribe called "The Plant Men". The gorilla that found the baby tore off the baby's clothes and the baby boy was naked. The narrator named him Ape. He grew up in a green loincloth with back length hair as a 12-year-old child and later sported a beard, shoulder blade-length hair, and a different loincloth as a man. Ape rescued a woman named Eva from the Plant Men to the jungle and they fell in love. Some months later, they had a son.
• The Black Stallion, a 1979 film directed by Carroll Ballard based on the 1941 novel by Walter Farley, features the adventures of a boy named Alec Ramsay (played by Kelly Reno) who is rescued from a burning shipwreck by a wild Arabian stallion whom he befriends during his time on a deserted island before both are found and taken back to civilization.
• The Blue Lagoon, a 1980 film directed by Randal Kleiser, features two cousins Emmeline and Richard Lestrange (played by Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins) who are left to fend fo themselves on a lush tropical island and experience both the physical and emotional changes caused by puberty after Paddy Button (played by Leo McKern), a cook who had previously saved them during a shipwreck, dies after a drunken bringe. A previous film adaptation of the story was directed by Frank Launder and released in 1949.
• The 1982 Italian comedy Bingo Bongo features a man who grew up among chimpanzees in the African jungle after escaping a plane crash as a baby.
• In the
  Feral Kid" lives in the wasteland near the refinery settlement. He flips, growls when displeased and has a fascination for the Gyro Captain's autogyro. The Feral Kid wears shorts and boots made from hide, hunts and defends himself using a lethal metal boomerang
  .
• In the 1994 film The Secret of Roan Inish, Fiona's brother, Jamie was thought to be lost at sea as an infant but was raised by a seal-like creature called a selkie.
• In the Tarzan parody George of the Jungle, the main protagonist George (as depicted in the 1997 live-action film) was traveling in the airplane above Bukuvu (a fictional nation in Africa) and the plane crashed. None of the passengers died, but George was lost. He was raised by an ape named "APE" who could speak in human language and even read books and played violin. In one episode of the 2007 reboot of the series, he came here in a monsoon of orphans.
• Walk Like a Man, a 1987 comedy film directed by Melvin Frank, features a man named Robert "Bobo" Shand (played by Howie Mandel) who was raised by wild dogs after being abandoned as an infant by his older brother in Alaska.
• In the 1992 Tim Burton film Batman Returns, the film's version of Penguin spent his childhood among penguins in Gotham City's sewers after being abandoned by his parents due to his deformity and vicious nature as an infant.
• Bad Boy Bubby is a 1993 Australian film by director Rolf de Heer in which the title character is subjected to lifelong social isolation by his mother. Events in the film lead Bubby to venture into the world where many of his interactions take on a darkly comical aspect.
• Nell is a 1994 film in which a young woman (portrayed by Jodie Foster) is raised by her extremely androphobic mother in an isolated cabin, and has to face other human beings for the first time after her mother's death.
• In the 1994
  Bamm-Bamm (played by Hlynur Sigurðsson and Marinó Sigurðsson), who was raised by wild mastodons
  .
• In the Friday the 13th film series, the main character Jason Voorhees was presumed drowned when he was 11 years old, but survived the drowning and grew up living in the woods.
• In the Joe Johnston 1995 film Jumanji, 12-year-old Alan Parrish (played by Adam Hann-Byrd) is lost in an alternate realm for 26 years due to the consequences of the eponymous board game where the clue read "In the Jungle You Must Wait Till the Dice Reads 5 or 8." After escaping, a now adult Alan (played by Robin Williams) seems relatively normal if a little bit eccentric and paranoid. The character Danny Budwing (played by Jonah Bobo) suffers a similar fate in the 2005 film Zathura: A Space Adventure.
• The title character of Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 anime film Princess Mononoke, called San, was raised by a wolf goddess along with her two wolf pups. San is drawn into a deadly conflict between the forest gods and the humans whose presence seems to threaten them.
• In the 2001 film Human Nature, a man (Toby Huss) experiences a psychological breakdown from the stresses of modern living as well as the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. He kidnaps his son to raise him in the woods. This boy (portrayed by Rhys Ifans) is eventually discovered by Dr. Nathan Bronfman (portrayed by Tim Robbins) and Lila Jute (portrayed by Patricia Arquette). Upon being named Puff, he is used by Dr. Bronfman as a living example of socialization's ability to "civilize" a wild human being.
• In the 2005 film The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D directed by Robert Rodriguez, Sharkboy (portrayed by Taylor Lautner) is a young warrior who was raised by sharks after he was separated from his father, a marine biologist, when a waterspout sunk their floating laboratory. He has many shark-like adaptations to his body including gills, fins, sharpened teeth, claws (although they seem to only be attached to his gloves), peak strength, highly trained sense of hearing, strong sense of smell, agility, reflexes and swimming ability. Sharkboy can also communicate with marine life and is not affected by deep sea pressure.
• In the 2007 film Barbie as the Island Princess, six-year-old Ro was shipwrecked on an island and raised by a red panda, peacock, and an elephant. Ro has no memory of her past and ten years later a prince discovers the island and takes her back to his kingdom. She is later revealed to be a long-lost princess who was lost at sea.
• Dschungelkind (Jungle Child), a 2011 German film directed by Roland Suso Richter, features the many experiences of eight-year-old Sabine Kuegler (played by Stella Kunkat) and her family in trying to start a new life in the tropical rainforest of Western New Guinea amongst the Fayu tribe from 1979 to 1989. Both the family and the tribe realize that love, hate, life and death have different values in the foreign culture than in their own. So begins a process of rapprochement in which both sides have to learn from each other. After several years, when the family travels to Germany for a holiday, the now sixteen-year-old Sabine (played by Sina Tkotschis) is confronted with a completely "foreign" world that is no longer hers.
• In the 2012 French animated film, Le Jour Des Corneilles, Pierre, the boy, was raised by his father, who turned into an ogre-like creature due to being maddened by his wife's death of childbirth, and later brings him to a town to heal him and meets a girl named Malon. Though he is raised by his father, Pierre does have some feral childlike traits.
• In the 2013 horror film Mama, young girls Victoria and Lilly are raised in the forest for 5 years by a spirit they call "Mama" after the spirit killed their depressed father before he could commit murder-suicide on them. As Victoria's glasses were taken from her, she mistook the spirit as the ghost of her mother. During that time, Victoria and Lily end up developing their own language, start acting like animals, and gain a filthy appearance while wearing what's left of their clothes. When they are discovered by trackers hired by their uncle and brought back to society, Victoria is able to reintegrate while Lily (whose only memories are of being raised in the forest and who sees the spirit as her true mother) is not.
• In the 2013 Disney film Frozen, an 8-year-old boy named Kristoff (voiced by Tyree Brown)^[5][6] had been raised along with his reindeer pet, Sven, by Rock Trolls in a valley until he grew up and left them to start his career as an ice harvester.
• In the 2014 film Barefoot, the character Daisy Kensington (portrayed by Evan Rachel Wood) was raised in isolation all of her life and has been barefoot since childhood.
• In the 2014 film The Boxtrolls, the main character Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright) is raised by the title characters in their underground cavernous home following the kidnapping of his father when he was a baby.
• In the 2015 film The Good Dinosaur, a 7-year-old feral caveboy named Spot (voiced by Jack Bright) befriends the main character Arlo the Apatosaurus. He behaves like a dog.
• In the 2016 film Storks, a girl named Tulip (voiced by Katie Crown) is the only human among the storks at Cornerstore on Stork Mountain after her homing location beacon was accidentally destroyed and was kept on Stork Mountain until she turned 18 to be returned to the human world but instead helps a top delivery stork deliver an unauthorized baby.
• In the 2016 film Pete's Dragon directed by David Lowery, a boy named Pete (Oakes Fegley) survived a car accident that killed his parents and was chased by a pack of wolves into the woods, until he was saved by a dragon. The dragon, whom Pete named Elliot from his favorite book he still has, took him in and raised him in the woods for six years. Then Pete was found by a forest ranger named Grace Meacham (Bryce Dallas Howard) and brought him to a nearby town.
• The 2016 film
  nude whenever possible.^[7]
• In the 2020 Pokémon film Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle, Ash and Pikachu discover a feral boy named Koko, Koko's real name is Al Molybden who was raised by the Mythical Pokémon called: Zarude in the Okoya Forest with the other Jungle Pokémon, originally Koko had parents who are researchers named: Chrom and Phossa Molybden, but Dr. Zed killed the couple by running them off a road leaving them wounded, Before Zed could reach them, Chrom and Phossa sent their son down a river inside a cradle to protect him along with their research contained in Phossa Molybden's pendant, Dr. Zed stole their sample supply of the healing spring water and left Chrom and Phossa Molybden to die in an explosion of their wrecked car. leading Al Molybden to found by Zarude, where Koko sported a loincloth, arm bands, and tribal paint on his face and torso resembling Zarude. Being raised by a Zarude caused Koko to think that he is a Pokémon, Koko is the ever first human to use a Pokémon move called: Jungle Healing.
• In the 2021 film Raya and the Last Dragon, Noi was raised in the streets of Talon by the monkey-like Orginis after the Druun petrified her mother.
• In the 2022 film Disenchanted, Giselle was raised by animals of the forest as a baby in her backstory told by Pip the chipmunk.
• In the 2022 film
  Three Bears Crime Family
  .