Coyote mating season is starting. Here is a post I wrote last summer about the Romans and their February wolf festival.
One of the most enduring archetypes that appears in folklore and legends (including urban legends) is the enduring story of children being raised by wolves.
The problem with these stories is that when they are examined with a skeptical eye, these stories fall apart. The famous story of Amala and Kamala, two “feral children” from West Bengal, was most likely a hoax. The Reverned Joseph Amrito Lal Singh claimed that he rescued these girls from a wolf den in 1920. The girls had severe learning disabilities, which Singh claimed came from them being raised by a pack of Indian wolves (which, incidentally, are known for occasionally taking children). There is some debate about what sort of disorders the girls had, but it is very unlikely that they were actually raised by wolves. During this time period, it was not unusual for very poor people in India to abandon severely disabled…
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“The Romans did not see that as a charming story; they meant to show that they had imbibed wolfish appetites and ferocity with their mother’s milk”- Terry Jones