Stories abound of humans brought up by wild animals, but often they are pure fiction. It’s rare to find someone who re-entered society after living in the company of animals and is able to talk cogently about his experiences – including, apparently, sharing food with a family of wolves. The first time Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja sat in front of a bowl of soup, he didn’t know what to do. He looked carefully, cupped his hand and plunged it into the bowl. The contact with the boiling liquid made him jump and the plate ended up in little pieces on the floor. It was 1965 and he was 19, but he hadn’t sat down at a table to eat since he was a small child. He had been living for up to 12 years alone in the mountains with only wolves, goats, snakes and other animals for company. When he was little – about six or seven, he estimates – his father sold him to a farmer, who took him to the Sierra Morena mountains, to help out an ageing goatherd. Soon the old man died and Marcos was left alone. Having suffered years of beatings from his stepmother, he preferred the solitude of the mountains to the thought of human company, and made no attempt to leave. What little the goatherd had taught him before he died was enough for him not to go hungry. He learned to hunt rabbits and partridges with traps made of sticks and leaves. “The animals guided me as to what to eat. Whatever they ate, I ate,” he says. “The wild boars ate tubers buried under the soil. They found them because they smelled them. When they were digging the soil looking for them, I threw a stone at them – they would run away and
then I would steal the tubers.” Marcos says he established a special bond with some animals. Many will find it hard to believe this story, about his relationship with a family of wolves: “One day I went into a cave and started to play with wolf cubs that lived there and I fell asleep. Later, the mother brought food for them and I woke up. “She saw me and looked fiercely at me. The wolf started to rip the meat apart. A cub got close to me and I tried to steal his food, because I was hungry as well. The mother pawed at me. I backed off. “After feeding her pups she threw me a piece of meat. I didn’t want to
touch it because I thought she was going to attack me, but she was pushing the meat with her nose. I took it, ate it, and thought she was going to bite me, but she put her tongue out, and started to lick me. After that, I was one of the family.” Marcos also says he had a snake as a companion. “She lived with me in a cave that was part of an abandoned mine. I made a nest for her and gave her milk from the goats. She followed me everywhere and protected me,” he says. These relationships kept loneliness at bay, Marcos says. He was only lonely when he could not hear animals – and in such cases he would
imitate their call. He can still reproduce the sound of the deer, the fox, the aguililla (booted eagle) and other animals. “Once they answered, I would be able to sleep because I knew they hadn’t abandoned me,” he says. By Laura Plitt – BBC Environment
