DAILY MAIL
In their darkest moments – often after being abandoned by their parents – these men and women turned to animals for solace.
For years, sometimes for over a decade, they claim they were raised by animals — from a pack of wolves to a troop of monkeys.
They were children when they claim the creatures took them in as one of their own, feeding them scraps of food in caves and tending to them so they would survive.
When they were found – often unable to communicate other than through grunts or barks – by shocked officials and returned to civilised society they often found it difficult to reintegrate.
Many were unable to walk properly and in one case, a girl who was found in a dog kennel in Ukraine and raised by hounds crawled out of the cage and barked at horrified police officers.
Here, MailOnline takes a look at the men and women who were raised by animals.
Spanish man ‘raised by wolves in a cave for 12 years’
When Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja was seven, he became stranded in Spain’s Sierra Morena mountain range.
It wasn’t fellow humans who helped the youngster when he was alone and terrified, but a pack of wolves.
For the next 12 years, the pack of wolves raised Pantoja as one of their own – they fed him scraps of food and they all slept in a cave in the mountains.
It wasn’t until 1965 when the Spaniard was 19 that he was found running around half-naked and barefoot – only using grunts for communication.
‘I only wrapped my feet up when they hurt because of the snow. I had such big calluses on my feet that kicking a rock was like kicking a ball,’ Pantoja, who has struggled since being brought back into civilised society, told El Pais in 2018.
Pantoja, now 77, was sent to the Sierra Morena mountain range in 1954 as a goatherd after his mother died in childbirth when he was three and his abusive stepfather ran off with another woman.
The seven-year-old was put under the care of an elderly goat shepherd who he would replace when he was older – but that same year, the goatherd died, leaving Pantoja alone and in the middle of the mountains.
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