Oxana Malaya has been the subject of many documentaries, interviews and newspaper headlines for her bizarre life story, where she became known as the ‘wild girl raised by dogs’. “What would happen if humans lived in the wild like animals?” It is an interesting example of the answer to the question.
Oxana, who was constantly neglected by her alcoholic family at the age of 3, when she was in need of care, was completely abandoned on the street one night. Purely instinctively, he crawled towards the kennel, which would provide him with a warm shelter.
After this stage, his life began to change irreversibly.
Born in a village in Ukraine, Oxana was a completely healthy child, physically and mentally, according to the necessary health checks after her birth. However, he was always neglected by his family, who was an alcoholic, and was left in the cold by his family at a young age.
3-year-old Oxana needed food and shelter. The night he was released on the street, he found a doghouse as his only remedy and went towards it. Oxana, who was not called back by her family afterward, ate what the dogs ate. She slept like a dog and even began to howl. In short, she did what dogs do, she does. After all his time with dogs, he began to truly see himself as a dog, forgetting all about acting like a human.
His life with dogs did not last until the end of his life.
Oxana, who lived with dogs from the age of 3 to about 8 years old, was noticed by the people around after a while. While he possessed most of the canine characteristics, such as walking on all fours, barking, sleeping on the ground, eating like a dog, and cleaning himself by licking himself, he lacked most basic human skills and behaved like a dog in every way.
After Oxana was found, she was taken to the hospital and physically checked by doctors. Although his physical elements such as bone and muscle development were greatly affected because he behaved like a dog in his growth and development period, the main problem with Oxana was the psychological effects created by this process.
Although she knew how to talk when she was abandoned by her family, as an 8-year-old Oxana was found to have completely forgotten how to speak. As a result of the observations made by doctors and psychologists, she was taken under surveillance for a while and started her treatment because she was mentally affected.
Despite starting treatment, he can occasionally act like a dog.
Oxana was heavily treated after she was found. She initially focused on speaking skills and participated in speech therapy. Oxana, who has gone through a difficult speech therapy process, although not fluently, can now speak. It is thought that Oxana, who seems impossible to regain the ability to speak, was able to speak a little before she was abandoned, and the treatment process was facilitated.
Doctors say that the spoken language is a little different. He still tends to perceive what is said as a command because he acts with his dog instincts. After her hospital stay was over, Oxana was taken into custody from her family and placed in a dormitory for mentally handicapped children in the countryside of Ukraine, where she began to be kept under surveillance by her teachers. Behavioral, social and educational therapies continued without interruption at the dormitory.
Oxana, who is now a 38-year-old adult woman, has only reached the level where she has the basic skills of a 6-year-old child despite all the therapy and treatment she has received. It’s not possible for Oxana to fully recover and be rehabilitated as a ‘normal’ person according to society, according to the doctors who have appeared in many documentaries and programs about her.
A lot of programs have been made about Oxana, who is known as a television celebrity.
Oxana participated in one of the talk show programs in 2013. In this program she participated, she gave an interview about herself and her experiences as long as she lived. On the show, she said she wanted to be treated like a normal person and was upset when other people called her dog girl, wild girl, she said. She also talked about her boyfriend and the life she lived, and she told that she leads a life close to normal.
Oxana Malaya is now living a happy life in a farmhouse under government protection, with her animals and her boyfriend. She also wants to find her biological mother, whom she lost and could not find in this process.
Oxana Malaya is not the only child whose psychology and life have changed irreversibly after being forced to live with dogs.
Apart from Oxana, there are other children who, for various reasons, behave like those animals as a result of living with animals that can be considered wild. One of them is a girl who was abducted by a female leopard at the age of 2 in 1912 and known as the ‘leopard child’. The leopard boy lives with the leopard he was kidnapped for 3 years. She meets the boy after a hunter kills the leopard and finds its three cubs. The girl, who shows leopard-like movements, is taken to her family.
Another interesting example is the ‘chicken boy’ named Sujit Kumar. Sujit is locked in the chicken coop by his family on the grounds that he has mental retardation. After a while, as a result of his mother’s and father’s death, his care is left to his grandfather. His grandfather continues to keep Sujit in the henhouse. So Sujit starts acting like a chicken, in keeping with his nickname ‘chicken boy’.
In addition, Julia Fullerton-Batten, a photographer, opened a photography exhibition on this subject called ‘Feral Children’, which means “wild children”.
In the exhibition, he recreated stories about children who had to grow up in the wild through his photographs, according to his own imagination.
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