The world was taken in by one of the most heartrending cases of a girl raised by dogs. Born in 1983, Oxana Malaya was left to live with a pack of wild dogs at the back of her house in early childhood.
Abandoned by her alcoholabusive parents, Oxana looked for warmth and some support among the animals. Over the years, she developed behaviours that can resemble the ones of several canines: barking, running on hands and legs, and even eating and drinking like a dog. Her language skills drowned, replaced by animal-like sounds.
Footage of feral child, Oxana Malaya. During her early childhood, she suffered neglect from her alcoholic parents. To survive, she sought refuge in a shed inhabited by wild dogs behind her home. From the age of 3 to around 8, these wild dogs nurtured and raised Oxana as if she… PIC.TWITTER.COM/KWZA4TT5PP
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For the next five years— from the age of three to eight— Oxana lived with the dogs in the shed. During that time, she received virtually no human touch, and the dogs were her substitute family. And, without any human socialization to emulate, Oxana began to behave like the dogs. She barked and ran on all fours, developed a sensitive sense of smell and hearing, traits and behaviors not at all associated with human children but with the very animals she considered her equals. She could no longer speak but only produced grunts, barks, and a plethora of other animal-like sounds. This domination was truly amazing since it was a reflection of her need to communicate and bond based on the only way she could in her surroundings.
In 1991, at about eight years is when Oxana was discovered living in the shed by social workers, although the condition of that hovel where she was fouund was abominable. That thing could not have been called a living was found.
Oxana was noted to show very few human traits; on the contrary, she acted like the dogs that she had for years lived with. She barked and grunted for communication, walked on fours, sat, ate, and drank like a dog. The first sight astonished the social workers with her performance, more or less like an animal, thus showing the depth of change caused by years of systematic and cruelly shocking neglect.
Oxana was placed in an orphanage and began a long, hard period of rehabilitation, which included extensive speech therapy and counseling. This was to go through basic human behaviors and social skills, relearning them, thus allowing her to get back her communicative abilities and to interact further with other people which had totally, severely deteriorated over those years of isolation with the dogs. In spite of these best attempts at rehabilitation, the psychological scars from her early childhood remained. She did not get any better in her social interactions and actually never adapted to normal human habits. The poor level of care during her early years has so badly imprinted her and left lasting effects on her. Thus, most of her adult life, Oxana spent in the ward of a care home for people with intellectual disabilities, where she is looked after until today.
The case of Oxana Malaya has been under scrutiny by many psychological studies and documentaries, reckoning among the most stunning examples of the involvements of the environment in child development. According to different experts, this case has tragically underlined the very essence of early nurturing and human interaction.
“Oxana’s case is perhaps one of the clearest examples of how important an early period of social and cognitive development is to a child,” Dr. William Schmidt emphasized, an extensive researcher studying feral children. Life amongst the dogs and living conversely in her formative years socialized her mindset, demeanour, and socioeconomic development. Such proof of evidence remains with her today in the troubled manner of social behavior and the need for ongoing care and support. The documentaries and media coverage of her life highlight the dramatic nature of these early experiences and the enormous challenge she met in trying to be adapted to human society after her rescue.
Today, Oxana is in her 40s and is still under the protection of an institution that provides care for people with intellectual problems. She now has massive improvements, but some difficulties are still faced, escalating, essentially, to her relatively sheltered life due to social and mental challenges. Her story not only is a strong testament to the resilience of humankind, but it also reminds one of the jarring and harsh reality of neglect and the importance of human contact from an early age for healthy development.
