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(whooshing) (clicking) (dinging) (soft bright music) - [Narrator] We are the paradoxical ape. Bipedal, naked, large-brained, long the master of fire, tools, and language, but still trying to understand ourselves. Aware that death is inevitable, yet filled with optimism. We grow up slowly. We hand down knowledge.
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We empathize and deceive. We shape the future from our shared understanding of the past. CARTA brings together experts from diverse disciplines to exchange insights on who we are and how we got here. An exploration made possible by the generosity of humans like you. (upbeat music) (bright music)
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- The issue of feral children, as you know, have been with us for a very long time. Largely through luck, I happen to know two of the living ones. The luck is caused entirely by television, newspapers, and I'm sorry to say, not by very much scientific evidence. My field has been primatology,
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I study baboons, monkeys, people like that, and one day, I received a called from BBC saying that they had in-hand a boy who'd been raised by monkeys, and would I care to go to Uganda and investigate the matter? Who can turn that down? I had actually got my interest from the wolf girls of India,
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who, when I was a student, we read about and discovered that this was maybe true and maybe not true. I have now visited John Ssebunya in Bombo, Uganda five different times, filmed five different documentaries. I've known him since the age of four to approximately 17. As you know, when you do documentary television,
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the control lies with the director, or sometimes the producer. I think I'm very fortunate to have known John over these many years, but I have no scientific data for you. I said I have a little bit of neurology, but I really have precious little, because nothing's been done in that direction. The first time I met John, I very carefully kept out of his way for a couple of weeks,
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but watched him while the TV people went about their business. John... lived in, as I say, a village called Bombo. The local story, and I confirmed this by chatting with people who lived there who spoke enough English for us to have a conversation, his parents were... alcoholics, they got in a fight, they got in many fights, and fire started, his shack burned down,
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and the story is that he was left in this jungle. Well, the word jungle is an English word, and it doesn't convey accurately the terrain. The terrain is more like chaparral that you would be familiar with here. Who claimed he was raised by monkeys? Well, he actually was captured by a woman named Millie, and allowed to live in her shed.
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She thought that he had been raised by monkeys, and that story became very common, and reached the British newspapers, and then got the attention of television. I've never heard John directly say that, although John's been in an English speaking school now for 15 years, he does not really speak the language, and I'm not sure he understands very much.
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So, my job was to find out, was he raised by monkeys? (audience laughing) So, I took with me the handbook of Eastern African primates, and I showed it to him, and ask him, through a translator, to tell me who the monkeys were. And so, he picked out gorillas. Unhappily, there are no gorillas
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in that part of Uganda. (audience laughing) So, I tried again the next day, and he picked out vervet monkeys. Well, there's a lot of vervet monkeys in that part of the world, and they're very interesting. They travel in rather loose troops, they tolerate strangers, they don't seem to mind people joining the group or leaving the group, and they have peculiar habit, as they forage,
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of examining the food, the seeds and things they're picking up, and then throwing half of it over their shoulder. And it occurred to me that in the mind of a six-year-old boy, this would look like being fed. John is now 17 years old. He now has a permanent companion who's his translator, the permanent companion was educated in Sussex.
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He speaks beautiful English, and he speaks for John. The only physiological evidence I know of occurred during shoot number five when I was asked to take John to the local medical center to have an MRI done, to have a brain scan done. I thought about this overnight
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and decided I didn't wanna do it. I didn't like the TV image of a white American taking a black African to the hospital and telling him to lie down and take this test. So, I told the director that the next morning expecting to be fired. (audience laughing) But (laughs) since I wasn't being paid
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it didn't make much of a difference. (audience laughing) And she said, "Oh, that's okay, "I'll have his mother do it." And that's the way it was actually done, and the way it appeared on screen. The readings were eventually done here in America by a neurologist who said that it looked as if he'd fallen out of a tree.
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So, neurology has become much more of an exact science than I had ever learned. That leads me, all to briefly, to CauCau, born in Los Riscos, southern Chile, who is almost exactly my age, if he's living, I have heard rumors he's not, but I have no reason to believe one way or the other, except that not many people my age are living,
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so it's quite possible. (audience laughing) He was known to be raiding garbage in the village of Los Riscos. He was taken to Santiago to what was either a hospital or an orphanage, he got an excellent, excellent medical evaluation for its time, including an EEG, which was unusual at that time.
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I have that record. The record suggests that he either suffers from epilepsy, schizophrenia, or illegalphrenia. That latter is a term I don't think has been used in many years. What's important about CauCau is that he was adopted by his speech teacher, Bertha Riquelme, and she lived with him in her home for about 12 years
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and kept daily records of what she was trying to accomplish. The only thing like that in the literature is the 150 years old, "The Wild Boy of Aveyron", where Dr. Itard kept a daily record, which, by the way, is beautiful literature. And although he's asking for money,, that's the purpose of the article
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that Dr. Itard wrote to the French Academy. It is just a wonderful story of human love and compassion, and frustration. And that's what happened with CauCau, as was true with Dr. Itard's charge, the onset of sexual interest spelled doom. The behavior became uncontrollable and embarrassing.
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CauCau actually went to school, he learned to count to 10. Before he became too difficult for Bertha to handle him, he was apparently taken over by a foster brother, who later wrote a book about him, a fictionalized account, and he said it was a fictionalized account. Where I'm going with this, is when the TV people
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got a look at this, they decided that they needed a puma. And so, on Chilean television appears two clips. They are led by a puma running through the forest holding a baby in its arms. This in the first time in the history I've told you that there is any evidence of CauCau being raised by an animal.
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But CauCau adopted the story, and was pleased to tell people about his life, being addressed by a puma. And this point, BBC comes in again and wants to film this. Their director goes to Los Riscos, where CauCau is now living on a farm with his foster brother.
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This is recent. I am on my way there with trepidation. I do not understand CauCau's Spanish, because it is actually an Indianized Spanish, which I've shown it to much more literate Spanish speakers who say, "No, I cannot understand this, "It's Indian, it's native." when BBC actually examined the situation,
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the foster brother said, "I do not like this. "We have here an 80-year-old person "who has fought a tough fight, "and he is now happy and content, "and we see no need at all "to have any television coverage done." And to their credit, BBC said, "We don't film people
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"who don't wanna be filmed." So, there is no further record of CauCau. Both of these boys, in my opinion, suffer from some form of mental deficiency. In the one case, John of Uganda, his family has pushed him forward, he's appeared on television in many European countries,
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he's sung in choirs, he's been to America, he's traveled a great deal. I've been to the school where he is a student. In my opinion, he is a mascot, and a pet in a school, which is called an orphanage, but actually is one of those British schools where everybody wears uniforms and learns Latin,
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neither of which interest John Ssebunya very much. CauCau appears on Chilean television in these two shorts. In the one of them, he has a new pair of shoes, and he patrols Los Riscos and wants people to admire his new shoes. We know really very little more about any anatomical or physiological evidence about him.
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The key to all of this, is why do we want to understand feral children? I'm going to conclude with this comment. Dr. Itard was interested in knowing whether he could take a child and teach him French culture. It was actually, of course, the time of the French fascination
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with the theories of Immanuel Kant, and Dr. Itard was interested in what we are given with our brains, and what we must learn with the a priori and the a posteriori. The foster parents of John Ssebunya seem to have no specific need, other than the discovery that they adopted,
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they adopted, by the way, some 32 children, all of whom went to the school orphanage. But John provided a rather steady income for the school over 15, 17 years. I know them, I've met them many times. They are people dedicated to their work, but they show no particular interest
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in how the boy might learn, or what he might learn. In the case of CauCau, Bertha, his foster mother, was alarmed that he had not been baptized, and the very first thing done in the hospital was that, and her interest is in seeing whether he would acquire, what she considered, appropriate religious values.
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The question, then, becomes what can we learn about feral children? I think we can learn a great deal about the human brain. Not theirs, but ours. (audience laughing) What is it that prompts us, you've heard a moment ago about the wolf girls of India, that Reverend Singh's interest in these girls
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was in seeing whether they might not have a native a priori understanding of a God. The moral lesson each of us brings to research and to our interests, our culture, our particular way of understanding things. When I mentioned feral children, almost the very first question is,
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"Oh, were they really raised by animals?" I'm sorry to disappoint you, I have no idea. (audience laughing) I doubt it. There are 4,000 cases about them, which there's some written record of human children being raised by animals. Not a week goes by that I don't get a letter from someone saying, "You study feral children?
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"Come, I want you to see the kids next door." (audience laughing) My wife and I, having raised three, we understand exactly the thing (audience laughing) that they're talking about. To get serious again, I think what's important about all of these situations is why humans want to know. Because they have a priori ideas of God?
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Because they need religion? Because they provide income? So, I urge you, and you're going to hear some fascinating papers today, as am I, to always keep in mind, what I would call, the metapsychology of these issues. As to why we want to know what we want to know,
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because I suspect that is the true value of all the time and money that's been spent on, are they really feral, were they really raised by animals? It says much more about the categories of our minds as humans and as investigators than it does about the children themselves.
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Thank you very much. (audience applauding) (soft music)
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