A girl was found living among monkeys in an Indian forest
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
>>> "She behaves like an ape and screams loudly if doctors try to reach out to her."
Like an ape or like a monkey? She was raised by monkeys but acts like an ape? A lay person perhaps wouldn't know the difference but by now someone with knowledge would be on site. I have been around several disabled children. The screaming and fear of being looked at or touched is not uncommon. No mention of how she reacts to being clothed? I'm no expert on feral children but I would expect that after eight years of being naked one would not be happy about clothing and that would deserve some mention ... unless of course clothing is nothing new to her.
I want to see her feet, specifically her toes. If she really hasn't ever worn shoes then her toes will show it.
From what we can tell, the news is pretty accurate.
"“These aren’t Jungle Book stories, they’re often harrowing cases of neglect and abuse...”
If you read the entire article, it's clear that this isn't a fairytale story. However, the fact that Ssebunya was abandoned by his human family and 'adopted' by a primate family gives me even more affection for the animal kingdom over the human kingdom. It's just as true, but at least there's heart at the core.
http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2017/apr/06/ jungle-book-redux -as-eight-year-old-found-living-amongst-monkeys-in-uttar-pradesh-1590649.html
Because humans never adopt animals? Or is it because animals never abandon their young?
> I want to see her feet, specifically
> her toes. If she really hasn't ever
> worn shoes then her toes will show it.
http://www.drgangemi.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/barefoot...
Uh, I'm no podiatrist, but those images are not particularly well distinguished from shoe wearing peers.
I don't look at those images and immediately think "feet that have never worn shoes" in my mind.
It's quite possible you're inferring too much from a translation artifact.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simian
Wikipedia explains it well -- there's no way to form a monkey clade (which includes new world monkeys and old world monkeys) which doesn't include apes.
My point was many languages besides English only have a word for the clade, and don't have a specific term for "everything in the clade but apes".
The most natural use of "monkey", and the only one with useful biological meaning, is to identify it with the simians in full (as that's the smallest clade which includes everything we think of as monkeys).
Of course, that makes apes a kind of monkey.
[1] https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/b7/69/46/b769...
Death to all footcoffins!
I think the toed socks are definitely very weird-looking, especially when they come in white, looks like a some sort of fetish gear.
They're not so much footcoffins as they are toe and sole protectors.
All VFs have a bit of rubber padding on the front of the toe to prevent toe-stubbing.
I've noticed a significant improvement in the coordination/sensitivity of my feet, I stub my toe a lot less often in VFs than when I wear regular shoes. My calves have also become a lot stronger, and my balance has improved as well.
I don't wear them all the time, but it's fun when I do.
For what it's worth, I have a pair of vibrams and they're very comfortable, even for weirdos like us. I imagine it's just a matter of sizing.
I've been thinking about buying these, along with a worn out pair of "normal" shoes.
Then I'll cut out the soles and put the top part over the weird comfy shoes.
Best of both worlds!
[1]http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/In-this...
What's wrong with kids running around barefoot?
I mean, depending on where you live in the world, a lot of infectious diseases can spread by either wounds on the hand or vectors invading through the palm of the hand.
GAHHHHH! All the children must wear hand-shoes all the time!! Otherwise they'll all die! Maybe we adults (alleged adults. I refuse to believe I am one.) should too.
/s
You're just being silly and worrisome.
edit: to be less vague:
(1) Tetanus spores are present in soil all over the world and can easily infect a cut on the foot - between 1 and 2 in 10 cases are fatal (https://www.cdc.gov/tetanus/index.html).
(2) Hookwork larvae are present in soil all over the USA (and many other places) and can infect through intact skin - not fatal but can have unpleasant complications (https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/hookworm/)
(3) bilharzia infects through skin contact with contaminated water which includes puddles and just wet soil - not in the USA but many other countries - and kills tens of millions every year (https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/schistosomiasis/index.html)
Lets take that sentence and s/India/Flint/. "When I see the photos of Flint, I see poverty, people starving, literally living in garbage". It isn't far off isn't it? So how would you feel if a person from China asked us, how are you able to fund NASA when you have your own citizens desperate in Flint? How are you able to fund NASA when you have growing illiteracy in many American cities? People believing the earth is flat. People killing each other in Chiraq. People asking us why we have the highest incarceration rate and effectively modern-slavery system in the world. Do you see how your question reflects more on us and our own culture?
Because poverty isn't a problem born out of "literally not enough money to feed the population" it's significantly more complex than that.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/eight-year-old-girl...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4386060/Mowgli-girl-...
EDIT: For those who don't understand the reference, "Malayalam" [1] is the official language of the South Indian state of Kerala.
The question was asking if the parent post mistyped "Malayam" instead of "Malayalam".
Looks like some folks have misunderstood my post and reacted negatively.
No, it's very far wrong. (I'm a Malayali.)
Can anyone verify the correct pronunciation?
Rehabilitation in India is a joke. The people attending to her neither have the knowledge not resources to cater to her.
Mental asylums and health centers in India are filled with sexual predators. They know that she can't complain about it nor would someone lend an ear if she tried to say something. Which makes her an easy target. Sexual abuse is the norm in mental health centers here.
Most mental health centers lack infrastructure, resources and fall short of trained personnel. It is a common sight to see patients chained, and thrown food at.
My first reaction when I heard the news - She was better in the forest away from the predators. I hope she gets the right sophisticated care and compassion she needs at this point of time.
We're not the only species that produces rapists.
I've lived all my life here and though I am not sure whether you are from here but when I read, "Rehabilitation in India is a joke", my first reaction was it's an understatement!.
Or she might as well be treated as a guinea pig in the guise of "research".
> 'She is still not able to speak, but understands whatever you tell her and even smiles,' Singh said
In his book, Sacks investigates various cases of children growing up without language, how they cope (or don't cope) with it, how they finally acquire language (if they do), and how differently they see the world in both the pre-linguistic and post-linguistic states. Hauser was one of the most famous cases of this sort, Helen Keller[4] was another.
Reading this book inspired me to learn sign language, which I expected to be radically different from spoken and written language, and more powerful in many ways, as you can physically describe things in ways that has little parallel to spoken and written languages.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_hauser
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enigma_of_Kaspar_Hauser
[3] - https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Voices-Oliver-Sacks/dp/0375704...
Was it?
Those kinds of signs didn't give me the aha moments I was yearning for. But perhaps part of my problem was that I only took a couple of introductory sign language courses. Maybe with exposure to more advanced sign language it would be different. I've considered taking some more courses to see what I'm missing.
Given that, I would say there's a good chance you aren't missing something; that sign language really isn't much different from any other language. I'm sure you've considered that yourself, though.
Of course she is frightened of people as it's still a new experience for her, and of course there's a cast of busybodies crowding her room, especially during a photo/camera op. However, it's wrong to say that the monkeys are doing a better job at parenting. There is no noble Mowgli fairy tale going on here.
(1) who decided to bring the media in?
(2) who decided that she should have a whole pile of people crowding in on her other than those responsible for her immediate care?
(3) who decided that all this has to be forced on her in record time?
I can see so many things (besides the three listed above) that are wrong from just a common sense point of view that the humans are definitely not acting just in her best interest here. At least the monkeys did not turn her into some kind of media spectacle.
Yes, hygiene, clean water and food are all good as is - probably - medical attention. But none of those trump an immediate barrage like the one described and visualized in the article, that's not for her benefit but for the benefit of the others present.
So, this is not about there being a 'Mowgli fairy tale', this is about how fairly obviously this is not being done in a way that is calculated to be of the biggest benefit to her. Culture shock is real and this girl is currently forced into an extreme version of that.
I don't know, but I'd place my wager on whoever turns this into a movie.
Cases like this are so extraordinarily rare that we will probably never really know for certain what the human brain is capable of in these extremes.
I think a lack of metalinguistic awareness plays a major role in language learning as the learner would have no way to reflect/process on the language. This skill is huge, and it's built in ages 6-8. This is the language skill that lets us discern literal and implied meaning from language (statements vs sarcasm), reflect on non-literal concepts (idioms and "love") and analyze and correct incoming communications that contain incorrect usage in word choice, grammar or pronunciation (e.g. If someone misspoke "He is...to the store...going," we infer the speaker likely means "He is going to the store").
Without a base language and meta linguistic skills, language learning would be done with very concrete utterances and gesturing which is consistent with immersion learning of a second language, but the learner's fluency will likely never progress to the point that a second language learner's fluency could reach.
My daughter lost most of her speech skills at the age of three, was diagnosed autistic, and after extensive therapy by age 9 was main-streamed and on the honor roll. She speaks fine, though with affectations.
But why is there a photo op in the first place?
Wait until she hits puberty. The monkeys probably saw her as a child. Once her pheromones started saying otherwise things would have become violent very quickly. Setting aside how the males might view here, there are hierarchies of females that need to be fought over. We don't have the natural tools, the teeth, necessary to exist in most primate societies.
Umm, where are you concluding that from? Does it not seem possible that humans would share with our relatives some olfactory communication substances and their effects?
We still have very little understanding of olfactory communication between humans (no human pheromones are known AFAIK) so I am sure we don't know yet about the lack of reaction to chemicals from other monkeys that you are positing.
Anyways, our reactions to other species' pheromones would not lead to conclusions in the opposite direction.
This discussion is kind of too long already but here's a few things you may be missing:
* Apes do rape women. * Humans use apes as "prostitutes" in some villages. (Tangential to your argument but not really relevant to the girl's case.)
" 'In India, people do not prefer a female child and she is mentally not sound,' DK Singh said. 'So all the more [evidence] she was left there.' "
I had no idea this had happened before or even that it could happen. Is this not a very rare event?
I'm guessing that the survival rate for feral children can't be very high, and even more so if the child gets to grow up.
Fascinating subject albeit very... discomforting.
You may be interested to learn about the founding of Rome. Check out the top of this poster: http://www.olympicartifacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/1...
We are truly social creatures.
Also she arguably got some socialization from the monkeys. I mean that's probably very imperfect. But it's very different than the cases of kids being locked up in rooms with no contact to anything.
The feral girl.
> Anyway, I think you ought to rethink your claim that Chomsky is the father of cognitive science and of modern linguistics.
He is one of the founders of cognitive science, and a major contributor to linguistics.
So his claim is factually true.
If he hasn't observed at least a dozen such children trying to learn language for a dozen years then he doesn't even know what are the things he doesn't know.
And guess what, I watched your video and even Chomsky admits that he only heard about few cases of feral children of which the one he talked about in detail means little because the girl was severely mistreated by parents in addition to growing up in isolation. And then he talked some more about other people inventing their own languages, but not living in complete social isolation.
New information has been reported since publication
of this story that raise significant doubts
about the veracity of the initial accounts on which it
was based. The story relied on reports by the Associated
Press and the New Indian Express quoting local officials
who came upon her, and a video interview with the
physician who treated her. These versions of what
happened to her are now being questioned by other
officials quoted in the Guardian and the Hindustan Times.
While the girl appears to have been abandoned near the
forest in question, according to these new reports,
these officials do not believe she had been living
among monkeys. The original headline has been changed,
and you can read about the new developments here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI
https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain
https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/blogs/rsa-divided-b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary
Linguists also administered several brain exams specifically geared towards measuring Genie's language comprehension. On one such test she had no difficulty giving the correct meaning of sentences containing familiar homophones, demonstrating that her receptive comprehension was significantly better than her expressive language. Genie also did very well at identifying rhymes, both tasks that adult split-brain and left hemispherectomy patients had previously been recorded performing well on. During these tests an EEG consistently picked up more activity from the two electrodes over the right hemisphere of her brain than from those over the normal locations of the Broca's area and Wernicke's area, and found especially high involvement from her right anterior cerebral cortex, lending further support to the researchers' conclusion that Genie was using her right hemisphere to acquire language.
As early as 1972 Genie scored between the level an 8-year-old and an adult on all right-hemisphere tasks the scientists tested her on, and showed extraordinarily rapid improvement on them. Her ability to piece together objects solely from tactile information was exceptionally good, and on spatial awareness tests her scores were reportedly the highest ever recorded. Similarly, on a Mooney Face Test in May 1975 had the highest score in medical literature at that time, and on a separate gestalt perception test her extrapolated score was in the 95th percentile for adults. On several other tests involving right-hemisphere tasks, her results were markedly better than other people in equivalent phases of mental development; in 1977 the scientists measured her capacity for stereognosis at approximately the level of a typical 10-year-old, significantly higher than her estimated mental age. The scientists also noted in 1974 that Genie seemed to be able to recognize the location she was in and was good at getting from one place to another, an ability which primarily involves the right hemisphere.
Genie's performance on these tests led the scientists to believe that her brain had lateralized, and that her right hemisphere had undergone specialization. Because Genie's performance was so high on such a wide variety of tasks predominantly utilizing the right hemisphere of her brain, they concluded her exceptional abilities extended to typical right-hemisphere functions in general and were not specific to any individual task. They attributed her extreme right hemisphere dominance to the fact that what very little cognitive stimulation she did receive was almost entirely visual and tactile. While even this had been extremely minimal it had been enough to commence lateralization in her right hemisphere, and the severe imbalance in stimulation caused her right hemisphere to become extraordinarily developed.
By contrast, Genie performed significantly below average and showed much slower progress on all tests measuring predominantly left-hemisphere tasks. Stephen Krashen wrote that by 2 years after the first examinations on her mental age Genie's scores on left-hemisphere tasks consistently fell into the 2½- to 3-year-old range, only showing an improvement of 1½ years. On sequential order tests she consistently scored well below average for someone with a fully intact brain, although she did somewhat better on visual than on auditory tests. The scientists especially noted that she did not start to count until late 1972, and then only in an extremely deliberate and laborious manner. In January 1972 the scientists measured her in the 50th percentile for an 8½- to 9-year-old on Raven's Progressive Matrices, although they noted she was outside of the age range of the test's design. Similarly, when the scientists administered Knox Cubes tests in 1973 and 1975 Genie's score improved from the level of a 6-year-old to a 7½-year-old, more rapid than her progress with language but significantly slower than that of right hemisphere tasks.
We know the 'facts' but we also don't. This is exactly the kind of story that needs fact checking, but to get that you need people on the ground, who are experienced and confirmation will take time which the attention span of the news cycle will not allow.
The worst is turning it into some kind of circus. Hope that now with the global attention the Indian authorities will immediately retrieve her from the current facilities with people clearly not trained for this, and get her the kind of specialized care and sensitivity she needs.
"There were no monkeys. She was not naked, and she wasn’t using her hands to walk. I don’t know how these stories are being spread.
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/mowgli-girl-found-in-...
But then - this feels more like a creative story. From the videos it looks like she might have been in the forest only for some time and needs rehab, but I am no expert here.
Unless you can guarantee that the child will adapt and have a better life (better != longer), I think it's immoral to take her from her original surroundings.
What's interesting is that in the past they would seem to manage to stay off the HN front page.
Now it seems like I see these stories start circulating on Outbrain or the other click bait networks and I think, well, that'll be on HN in a week or so!
These stories are usually large part fake news, or reality tweaked or skewed with some angle to make it almost irresistible to read about. I personally have no use for these types of stories on HN but certainly understand they are created with a very compelling hook to want to share them.
If the girl managed to survive for so many years, she should have been left with the trouppe of primates and get observed. This sudden change will probably be worse than any other less brutal change in the environment.
A gradual process in several months would be more successful.
Time will show whether the sudden removal is going to work this time.
Washington Post has completed the transition into a full blown supermarket tabloid.
"Feral children?" How amusing; is that an actual phrase?
It evokes a domesticated species of rug-rat, bred in the wild.
Surely the discussion here should be more about what a horrific system exists in parts of India that handicapped people are turned into stories.
Do I really need to spell it out it's an abandoned handicapped girl found near monkeys????
The doctor says when she was brought in she was near starving (video)? Were the monkeys looking after her or not?
This is a common fairy tale, seriously people, what is wrong with you that you can't see the real story here. It's about poverty, people not dealing with mental illness and broken systems???
The fact doctors even allowed her to be filmed for your amusement shows they are not very well trained.
It's a fucking fairy tail.
About how people in poverty deal with mental retardation.
They are not dealing with the issue at hand.
Seriously, someone mentioned Jane Goodall, fuck.....