Featured Image Credit: 60 Minutes Australia
Topics: News, World News
Kit Roberts
A child ended up mimicking the behavior of wild dogs after being left outside by her parents at a young age.
When Ukrainian authorities discovered Oxana Malaya, they were shocked to find her living amongst a pack of wild dogs.
Not only that, but the young Oxana was also walking on all fours and barking just like a dog.
But this wasn't an act or childhood game, as she had actually taken on these behaviours for real, and had been living with the dogs since she was three-years-old.
The girl's parents were alcoholics and paid next to no attention to their young daughter.
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One night, Oxana had been left outside in bitter cold, explaining in a later interview: “Mum had too many kids, we didn’t have enough beds.”
She crawled into the den of her dog Naima and slept there in an attempt to keep warm.
Soon, the pair were joined by stray dogs and became a pack.
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Oxana began to act like the dogs, barking, walking on all fours, eating food directly off the ground without using her hands, and cleaning herself with her tongue.
She even claimed to have been able to communicate with the dogs, saying: “I would talk to them, they would bark, and I would repeat it.”
Oxana became extremely assimilated into the pack - who soon came to regard her as one of their own.
So much so that when the local authorities came to take Oxana away, the dogs became highly protective of her and attempted to defend her from what they regarded as a threat.
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In the end, authorities had to give them food scraps to be able to get to Oxana.
After her five year period living with the dogs, Oxana was taken to a children's facility, where she began learning how to walk upright and to talk as well as specialized therapy.
The director described her as being 'more like a little dog than a human child'.
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But some of Oxana's dog-like behaviours still persisted, for example, when given an object she would sometimes hide it, the Sun reports.
She said: "When I feel lonely, I find myself doing anything I crawl on all fours. This is how lonely I feel.
“Because I have nobody, I spend my time with dogs, I go for walks and do anything I want to. Nobody notices that I walk on all fours.”
While Oxana was able to learn to communicate, doctors concluded that she had still not reached a level of mental development for her age but instead had the mental capacity of a six-year-old.
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According to local media in 2013, an adult Oxana was able to get a job on a farm.
Her case has become a landmark example in the study of how humans develop and the argument between nature and nurture.