Care staff in Volgograd who discovered the “bird boy” revealed that he had been raised in an aviary and is only able to communicate by chirping or flapping his arms. The boy was treated like a pet by his 31-year-old mother who kept him in a cage alongside her collection of birds.

The 2-room apartment where he was discovered was full of cages containing feed and droppings. Although the “bird boy” was never physically harmed or denied food by his mother, she had callously ignored him in favour of her pets. The only communication the boy had ever experienced was the calls and chirps of birds.

Social worker Galina Volskaya confirmed that the boy has no understanding of human language and that, when realizing that he is not understood, starts to wave his hands in the manner of flapping wings. Thankfully, the boy was taken away from his mother and taken into care at a clinic in Kirovsky.

Mowgli syndrome

Russian investigators have suggested that the boy is suffering from “Mowgli syndrome”, a condition referring to Kipling’s Jungle Book character raised in the wild by wolves.

The plight of the “bird boy” is just one occurrence of Mowgli syndrome to be reported in recent times. In Cambodia, a 27-year-old woman called Rochom P'ngieng was discovered wandering naked in the jungle. She didn’t understand human language and had apparently been living amongst animals since the age of 8. Her identity was only revealed after a local policeman acknowledged her as his daughter who had been missing for nearly 20 years.

In Russia, a so-called “werewolf boy” was found living with stray cats and dogs in the Stavropol region in February 2006. The police, who named him Lyokha, said he had been found living in a lair made of leaves and sticks. Despite concerns for his safety, the boy escaped from a Moscow clinic just one day after he had been rescued.