Extreme Child Neglect

Here's a sad story.

Russian police have rescued a five-year-old girl in Siberia who was raised by cats and dogs.

The girl was locked up in a room with cats and dogs and as a result does not talk, but barks and makes hissing sounds instead in an act of imitation of her inmates of other species.

Other animal like traits include her jumping at the door and barking when her caretakers left, and her having "clear attributes of an animal and jumping at people." She laps her food from her plate like animals and cannot hold a spoon or fork, the report says.

The child was found in a squalour in the east Siberian city of Chita. The police report also said that "the water, heating, gas, and sanitation had long ago been switched off". It is, however, not known as to how she had been kept locked in the room.

Follow the link for other reports seemingly drawn from Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book files.