Wild Peter
Wild Peter, or Peter the Wild Boy, was the first feral child to really become well-known. He was described as a “naked, brownish, black-haired creature when he was captured in 1724 close to Helpensen in Hanover, Germany when he was just 12 years old. Before he was captured, Wild Peter lived in the wild, ate only plants, climbed trees easier than any man, and wasn’t really able to speak. When he was offered bread, he refused it and sucked instead on the sap from green twigs.
Wild Peter was eventually taken to England where he was presented to King George I and studied by the leading men of letters at the time. He eventually did eat vegetables and fruit, but only learned two words: “King George” and “Peter.” Dying in 1785, Peter was buried in Northchurch, England, where his tombstone is still visible today. Modern scholars have diagnosed him with the rare Pitt-Hopkins syndrome, which causes a severe delay in mental development and was perhaps the reason Peter was left alone as a child.
