History Main / WildChild

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amala_and_Kamala Amala and Kamala]]

The extreme end of NoSocialSkills -- a feral child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has little or no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. These individuals are not just ''bad'' at social interaction; they are so limited that they are effectively wild animals who happen to have human form. And not [[TalkingAnimal the friendly talking kind, either]].

Characters who are raised by fictional talking animals (RaisedByWolves) are much better off than a Wild Child. If a Wild Child is raised by animals they will be realistic, and no substitute for real parents. Sometimes this is played for comedy, with the WildChild displaying all kinds of entertainingly embarrassing behavior from inappropriate sniffing to a tendency to bite anyone who looks at them cross eyed.

In RealLife, "feral children" are a rare phenomena, the results of abandonment or horrific neglect/abuse. What exactly happened to them while they were out of contact with normal human culture? Is their odd behavior caused by lack of social contact, or did they have developmental problems already? In real life feral kids are almost never rehabilitated.

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKsO1t3jktY Some Honeycomb Cereal commercials were centered around the character Bernard, the Bee Boy that was raised by Bees]]. Here's his site: http://www.beeboy.org/us/index.php. Quite amusing.

* The latest Honeycomb Cereal commercials are centred around the character Bernard, the Bee Boy that was raised by Bees.

In RealLife, "feral children" are a rare phenomena, the results of abandonment or horrific neglect/abuse. What exactly happened to them while they were out of contact with normal human culture? Is their odd behavior caused by lack of social contact, or did they have developmental problems already?

In real life feral kids are almost never rehabilitated. In fiction they might move on from this extreme trope.

* Ads for Quiznos subs showed a perfectly normal looking businessman who preferred Subway sandwiches; his companion eating Quiznos mockingly says "What were you, raised by wolves?" Cue a flashback with the Subway man either playing with his wolf pup litter-mates or ''suckling at his mother's teat''.
** Uncannily fitting, and rather ironic, when you take into account the fact that the wolf-man in question was played by JimParsons, who would go on a few years later to play the [[MostTriumphantExample ultimate]] NoSocialSkills character on TV today -- ''TheBigBangTheory'''s Sheldon Cooper.

* San, the titular PrincessMononoke.

* One inexplicable example is Ran from ''BlueSonnet'' who was raised by wolves for no good reason since it had no perceptable effect on her personality and skills. She was simply a normal school girl in her primary personality with a secondary personality who had a more aggressive personality and phenomenal cosmic power for reasons that had nothing to do with having been raised by wolves.

* The current backstory of Aquaman himself is that he was raised by dolphins until he was twelve years old, and the entire time earnestly believed he was one of them.

* The Penguin in ''BatmanReturns'' was literally raised by... you guessed it, [[EverythingIsBetterWithPenguins penguins]].

* The titular character from the short story ''WolfAlice'' by Angela Carter. She is raised from infancy by wolves and captured by a hunter who kills her "mother", then given to a group of nuns who attempt to domesticate her. They eventually decide she cannot be integrated into society and instead send her to live with a mysterious werewolf/vampire called the Duke. Though she performs some basic human behaviour, she never learns to speak.

[[quoteright:330:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Romulus_remus.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:330: How did it turn out? The one on the left killed the other one, created TheEmpire, led a mass rape and [[ArsonMurderAndJayWalking inspired some Star Trek baddies.]]]]

->'''Ryan:''' You were raised by wolves, weren't you?
->'''Colin:''' I was raised by wolves, then I was deposited in a small family of weasels, and then, after that, I was with two beavers and a platypus. It was an ongoing thing.
-->-- ''WhoseLineIsItAnyway''

The extreme end of NoSocialSkills - a wild (or feral) child is a child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. These individuals aren't just ''bad'' at social interaction; they're so limited that they're effectively wild animals who happen to have human form. And not [[TalkingAnimal the friendly talking kind, either]]. Quite often the character in question was raised by wolves specifically, because (probably due to the legend about the founding of the Roman Empire) those are what people think of first when they imagine a human child raised by animals.

This is usually played for laughs in fiction, with the WildChild displaying all kinds of entertainingly embarrassing behavior from inappropriate sniffing to a tendency to bite anyone who looks at them cross eyed.

In RealLife, "feral children" are a rare phenomena, the results of abandonment or horrific neglect/abuse, and are almost always surrounded by mysteries. What exactly happened to them when they were out of contact with normal human culture? Is their odd behavior caused by lack of social contact, or were they already 'off' (ie, autistic or developmentally delayed) before they were abandoned? What role does physical injury and malnourishment play in all this?

The one universal factor in real life wild child cases is [[NiceJobBreakingItHero the near impossibility of rehabilitating said children.]] While those with some record of human contact may eventually be integrated back into society with only mild to moderate impairment, those who miss the first five or six years of normal human interaction find it almost impossible to learn human language, to walk or engage meaningfully with other humans.

For the adult version, see NatureHero or JunglePrincess. Compare RaisedByOrcs.

Not to be confused with the 2008 film of the same name, which is actually about a BrattyTeenageDaughter.

* In ''TheAdventuresofSharkBoyandLavaGirl'', Shark Boy was raised by sharks, causing him to not only be very aggressive, but evolve shark-like superpowers. Adverted slightly in that he has no problem speaking English or interacting with humans, except for heightened agression.

* Twin brothers Romulus and Remus make this at the least OlderThanFeudalism. Although they managed to found Rome (yes, ''the'' Rome), it was distinctly uncivilized during their rule, and Romulus ended up killing Remus. Note that "she-wolf" and "prostitute" are the same word in Latin (the closest English counterpart would be "bitch"), so the story probably had a double meaning LostInTranslation.
** Note the wolf only ''nursed'' them; they were found by a shepherd while still infants.
* Enkidu in ''TheEpicOfGilgamesh'', making this OlderThanDirt. (Though he was an adult.)
** Enkidu is turned into something like a civilized man with sex and beer. Those Mesopotamians had their priorities straight.

* Mowgli from ''TheJungleBook'', the TropeCodifier.

* Referenced/parodied in TerryPratchett's ''Discworld/GoingPostal'' with Stanley, who was raised by peas. Not on, ''by''. No further explanation is ever given.

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* [[HomestarRunner Homsar]] was raised by a cup of coffee.
** And a chipwich!
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* Since ThereIsNoSuchThingAsNotability, this troper would like to point out his own modest contribution to the genre - an ongoing piece of (ahem) erotic literature entitled ''[[http://www.p-synd.com/ketrin/ketrinp.htm Ketrin]]'', featuring a bisexual teenage feral child raised by wolves - sorry, ''[[CallARabbitASmeerp lupinoids]]'' - who (among other things) finds himself TakenForGranite and worshipped as a god by superstitious (and very horny) villagers.

* Every single [[AllTrollsAreDifferent Troll]] in ''{{Homestuck}}''. As part of a coming-of-age process, they find a monster native to Alternia (their home world) and it becomes their Lusus, or guardian as they grow up.

* Aqualad of ''TeenTitans'' was orphaned and basically fended for himself until he was about 12. Only through the intervention and guidance of a god-like figure kept him from going completely feral. Did I mention he was also an Ichtyphobe? Not a good thing to be when you spend your entire childhood in the ocean.

* There's a story that a European emperor (Frederick the Great?) wanted to find out if he could raise soldiers from birth, without motherly care. So he took some infants from their families and gave them to caretakers who were instructed not to cuddle or talk to them. All the babies died.
** Another story is about an Egyptian Pharaoh who ordered two children to be raised without anyone speaking to them in order to see what language they'll start speaking.

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* Emily Watson from ''{{Spacetrawler}}'' was raised by coyotes. She's a loner, but she can function in human society just fine.

* The live action adaptation of ''TheFlintstoines'': Bamm-Bamm Rubble was one of these, raised by wild mastadons.

* One episode of StarTrekDeepSpaceNine involved [[TheWoobie Chief O'Brien's]] young daughter, Molly, accidentally falling through some kind of temporal anomaly into a prehistoric wilderness. By the time they were able to pull her back through, she had experienced something like 10 years there entirely alone. She barely remembered her own name or how to speak and behaved much like the stereotypical cavewoman might be expected to. After a difficult period of not being able to adjust, and seeing how happy she was in a holographic recreation of her wilderness home, [[TearJerker O'Brien and his wife realize that she just doesn't belong there anymore and take her back to the anomaly for her own well being]]. [[TimeyWimeyBall Fortunately, she somehow arrives in the past only a few minutes after Young Molly first arrived and is able to send her younger self back through to the future, happily reuniting the O'Briens with their daughter mere moments after they thought they had to give her up forever.]]

The extreme end of NoSocialSkills - a wild (or feral) child is a child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. These individuals aren't just ''bad'' at social interaction; they're so limited that they're effectively wild animals who happen to have human form. And not [[TalkingAnimal the friendly talking kind, either]].

This is usually played for laughs in fiction, with the WildChild displaying all kinds of entertainingly embarrassing behavior from inappropriate sniffing to a tendency to bite anyone who looks at them cross eyed.

The extreme end of RaisedByWolves - a wild (or feral) child is a child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language. These individuals aren't just ''bad'' at social interaction; they're so limited that they're effectively wild animals who happen to have human form. And not [[TalkingAnimal the friendly talking kind, either]].

The one universal factor in real life wild child cases is [[GoodJobBreakingItHero the near impossibility of rehabilitating said children.]] While those with some record of human contact may eventually be integrated back into society with only mild to moderate impairment, those who miss the first five or six years of normal human interaction find it almost impossible to learn human language, to walk or engage meaningfully with other humans.

* Keenan (Ikuto) from ''DigimonSavers'' is a type of this...Only he slightly knows how to act around humans because Digimon act sociable to each other. He still uses Tarzan-like language though (even though Digimon have flawless English (Or Japanese)).

* Briefly mentioned in the DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse novel ''The Crooked World''. On a [[WesternAnimation cartoon]] planet, Fitz accidentally causes a young woman who, being TheIngenue on a planet of characters fit for a children's cartoon, suffers from InnocenceVirginOnStupidity, to write to the DeliveryStork and ask for them to be brought a child. The stork, however, has trouble tracking him down, gets tired, and accidentally drops the baby in the jungle, but is reassured by the thought that the child will be RaisedByWolves.

* Big Alice Eyesore in ''The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids'' is raised by ''[[RaisedByWolves hyenas]]'' after her ''[[ThereAreNoTherapists child psychologist]]'' parents [[ParentalAbandonment forget/abandon]] (this troper doesn't remember which) her at a wild animal park and decide that the hyenas are better equipped to deal with Alice and her [[SlasherSmile all-canine teeth]]. Her parents eventually return for her when she's about 11 or 13, but after learning that child psychology doesn't work on hyenas they abandon her for good at the [[BoardingSchoolOfHorrors horrible school]] where the story takes place. [[spoiler:By the end of the book, Alice has been brought back from the dead (cryogenically frozen/coma?) and returned to her hyena family. She is the only kid who hasn't been [[TransformationRay forcibly aged]] or driven underground. She achieves a symbolic victory by climbing the highest tree in the park and declaring herself leader of her pack.]]

* [[BoisterousBruiser Leman Russ]], primarch of the [[SpaceWolf Space Wolves]] in ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'', was literally RaisedByWolves...[[BigBadassWolf wolves the size of]] ''[[BigBadassWolf horses]]''.

* Since ThereIsNoSuchThingAsNotability, this troper would like to point out his own modest contribution to the genre - an ongoing piece of (ahem) erotic literature entitled ''[[http://www.p-synd.com/ketrin/ketrinp.htm Ketrin]]'', featuring a bisexual teenage feral child RaisedByWolves - sorry, ''[[CallARabbitASmeerp lupinoids]]'' - who (among other things) finds himself TakenForGranite and worshipped as a god by superstitious (and very horny) villagers.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Romulus_remus.jpg
[[caption-width:330: How did it turn out? The one on the left killed the other one, created TheEmpire, led a mass rape and [[ArsonMurderAndJayWalking inspired some Star Trek baddies.]]]]

[[/folder]]

[[caption-width:330: How did it turn out? The one on the left killed the other one, created TheEmpire, led a mass rape and inspired some Star Trek baddies.]]

** The primarch of the Night Lords, Konrad Curze a.k.a. Night Haunter, wasn't raised by anything. He was not the most stable primarch, though, and grew up into a terrifying hybrid of [[HeartOfDarkness his namesake]] and {{Batman}}.

* Gau of ''FinalFantasyVI'' was abandoned by his father at a very young age and had to survive alone on the Veldt. He speaks broken english, and usually moves around on all fours, but otherwise is never shown to have any trouble fitting in with the rest of the party.

-->--'''WhoseLineIsItAnyway'''