The Real-Life Mowgli, The Boy Who In 1872 Was Found Living In Jungle. They found him hunting alongside the wolves and noted that he was walking on all four of his limbs.
Dina Sanichar was first discovered in 1867, after a band of hunters spied what they initially thought was a wild animal sleeping in the mouth of a cave in Bulandshahr district, India.
When the men finally smoked the creature out its hiding place, they were astonished to find it was actually a boy of around 6 years old. The child appeared to have been living in the wilderness for most of his life, and had allegedly survived by scampering on all fours with a pack of wolves.
The hunters brought the boy to the Sikandra Mission Orphanage in Agra, where he was taken in and named Dina Sanichar.
Missionaries spent the next several years trying to rehabilitate the “Wolf Boy,” but years in the wild had taken their toll. Sanichar never learned to talk before his death in 1895, and he preferred to gnaw on bones and dine on raw animal meat rather than cooked food.
Some have since suggested that his story may have inspired the feral boy character “Mowgli” in Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” stories.
Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.