David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

In 1981 Mehmet Tunc, a Turkish ‘guest worker’ in Germany, went home with his cat and family for a vacation. At the Turkish border, Minosch disappeared. Sixty-one days later, back on the island of Sylt, in northern Germany, the family heard a faint scratching at the door. It was a bedraggled Minosch.

Shaun Philips, and his father, Ken, lost Silky at Gin Gin, about 200 miles north of Brisbane, Australia. That was in the summer of 1977. On March 28, 1978, Silky turn up at Mr Philips’s house in a Melbourne suburb. According to his owner, ‘he was as thin as a wisp and stank to high heavens’.

In 1978, this three-year-old Persian walked home from the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, to Adelaide — a trip that took a year. Said his owner, Kirsten Hicks, 15, ‘although its white coat was matted and filthy and its paws were sore and bleeding, Howie was actually purring’.

Rusty distinguished himself by setting an American all-time speed record for a cat return. In 1949 this ginger tom travelled from Boston, Massachusetts, to Chicago, Illinois, in 83 days. It is speculated that he hitched rides on cars, lorries and trains.

Brent Todd and his family moved from Farmington, Utah, to Mill Creek, a suburb of Seattle, Washington, in April, 1996, taking with them their eight-year-old tomcat, Ninja. After a week, Ninja jumped over the fence of the new yard and disappeared. More than a year later, on May 25, 1997, Ninja turned up on the porch of the Todds’ former home in Farmington, waiting to be let inside and fed. He was thin and scraggly, but his distinctive caterwaul was recognised by the Todds’ former neighbours, Marilyn and John Parker. Mrs Parker offered to send Ninja back to the Todds, but they decided to let him stay.

In September 1994, Ernie jumped from the truck of Chris and Jennifer Trevino while it was travelling 60 mph down the highway 600 miles west of their home. A week later, Ernie showed up at the Trevinos’ home in Victoria, Texas. When Mrs Trevino called the cat by name, he came forward and rubbed his face against Mr Trevino’s leg.

The Servoz family lost their pet tom, Gringo, from their home in Lamarche-sur-Seine, France, in December 1982. The following July they learned that the cat had moved to the French Riviera. Wishing to escape the cold winter, he had made the journey south in a week and appeared at their summer home, where neighbours took care of him.

On June 23 or 24, 1985, Muddy Water White jumped out of a van driven by his owner, Barbara Paule, in Dayton, Ohio. Almost exactly three years later, he returned to his home in Pennsylvania. ‘He came and just flopped down like he was home,’ said Mrs Paule. She fed him for three days before realising he was Muddy Water White, an identification that was confirmed by the local vet.

Twin brothers Romulus and Remus were allegedly raised by a wolf after being abandoned in the countryside by their uncle. A number of years later they were rescued by a shepherd, and they went on to found the city of Rome in 753 BC. Scholars long considered their childhood adventures to be mythical, but recent studies of children known to have lived with animals have demonstrated that they could well be an element of truth to the Romulus and Remus legend.

In 1344, hunters in the German Kingdom of Hesse captured a boy between 7 and 12 years of age who had been living in the wild. Wolves had brought him food and dug holes to shelter him at night. The boy ran on all fours and had an extraordinary ability to leap long distances. Treated as a freak by his human captors, he died shortly after his return to civilization because of an enforced diet of cooked food.

In 1661, in a Lithuanian forest, a party of hunters discovered a boy living with a group of bears. The hunters captured him even though he resisted by biting and clawing them. Taken to Warsaw, Poland, and christened Joseph, the boy continued to eat raw meat and graze on grass. Although he never dropped the habit of growling like a bear, Joseph acquired a limited vocabulary and became the servant of a Polish nobleman.

In 1672 a 16-year-old boy was found trapped in a hunter’s net in the hills of southern Ireland. Since running away from his parents’ home as a young child, the boy had lived with a herd of wild sheep. He was healthy and muscular even though he ate only grass and hay. After his capture he was taken to the Netherlands, where he was cared for in Amsterdam by Dr Nicholas Tulp. The boy never learned human speech, but continued to bleat like a sheep throughout his life.

In 1767 two hunters captured a girl who attacked them after they shot her bear companion in the mountains near the village of Fraumark, Hungary. The tall, muscular 18-year-old girl had lived with bears since infancy. Later she was locked up in an asylum in the town of Karpfen because she refused to wear clothes or eat anything but raw meat and tree bark.

In 1800 hunters captured a 17-year-old boy who had lived alone in the forest of Aveyron, France, since he was an infant. Given the name Victor, the boy was not happy living in civilised society and repeatedly tried to escape. He also growled and gnashed his teeth at first, but later became adjusted to being with humans. When he died at the age of 40, he had learned only three words.

In 1867, a hunting party found a seven-year-old boy living with wolves in a cave in the jungles of Bulandshahr, India. Taken to the Sekandra Orphanage near Agra and given the name Dina Sanichar, the boy refused to wear clothes and sharpened his teeth by gnawing on bones. For 28 years he lived at the orphanage, but he never learned to talk. In 1895 he died of tuberculosis aggravated by the one human habit he had adopted — smoking tobacco.

An intriguing but not fully substantiated case is that of Englishman William Milding, the 14th Earl of Streatham. (One authority believes the name of this child was actually William Russell.) Shipwrecked on the West African coast at the age of 11 in 1868, Mildin lived with apes for 15 years before being discovered and returned to England. Mildin may have inspired Edgar Rice Burroughs to create his most famous character — Tarzan of the Apes.

In October 1920, the Reverend J.A.L. Singh captured two girls, one about three years old and the other about five, who had lived with a pack of wolves near the village of Midnapore, India. Named Amala and Kamala by Singh, the girls were mute except for occasional growling sounds, walked on all fours and loved to eat raw meat. After a year in civilization, Amala died. Kamala eventually acquired a 45-word vocabulary before her death in 1929.

In December 1933, a woodcutter captured a boy about five years of age in the jungles of Ahuachapan Province in El Salvador. The boy, nicknamed ‘Tarzancito’, had lived alone since infancy, subsisting on a diet of wild fruit and raw fish. Newspaper correspondent Ernie Pyle, who met Tarzancito, reported that when the boy first returned to human society, he communicated by howling and frequently attacked and bit people. Eventually Tarzancito learned to talked and adjusted to human life.