Feral Children Feral children are those said to have been nurtured and reared by animals in the wild. Children who have wandered off and survived on their own and children who have been deliberately deprived of human contact may also be described as feral. These children are of interest to the scientific community because they may shed light on the origins of language and on the interrelation of culture and biology. There have been more than 40 recorded cases of children being reared by animals, from a 14th-century Hessian wolf child to such 20th-century cases as a gazelle boy in the Western Sahara and a wolf boy in Sul