Talk:Oxana Malaya

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How can anyone believe she has super senses?

Google searches for oxana feral and oxana raised dogs do not seem to turn up anything relevant. Urban legend, maybe? I'm blanking until someone can give some evidence of a feral child named Oxana... -- Wapcaplet 17:28 26 May 2003 (UTC)


 * Nor the other spelling "Oksana". - Montr&eacute;alais

Phil Torr says http://www.feralchildren.com/en/sitemap.php

and this page notes her as neglected child, not feral

I just saw her on Discovery.

Indeed, Oxana Malaya was featured on the Optomen special 'Wild Child - The Story of Feral Children'. Little is known of what has come of Oxana since the program was filmed back in 2003. (now '2006')

I have also seen her name spelled 'Oksana' so it is a common mistake.

If she is really Ukrainian her name will probably be Оксана Малая, which comes up with a number of Google hits listing her as a "dog-girl". There is no letter "X" in Slavic languages, so spelling it "Oks" would just be an alternative transliteration. --Fastfission 03:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)


 * There is an x in both Ukrainian and Russian but, their alphabets are largely phonetic, and x, in English represents 2 distinct consonants put together. It's effectively just a shorthand for ks and as such, the Cyrillic x doesn't represent it. I do find it kind of interesting that there is no Ukr article on her. I'm going to have to ask some friends if they've heard anything about her.--Senor Freebie (talk) 11:11, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Real Name?
Is "Malaya" the family name of her parents? It does not look like a Ukrainian or Russian family name at all, because in fact it is a common Russian (possibly Ukrainian too) adjective meaning "small" or "little". Hi There 12:10, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Quite possibly a nickname. there is more recent info has been featured on Fark: http://theage.com.au/news/world/the-girl-who-ran-with-the-pack/2006/07/18/1153166383022.html as well as a picture. I'll attempt at adding it to the main page, duck+cover. as well as here: http://www.peoples.ru/family/children/malaya/ very detailed, except in russian.

There is a conflict with her actually being considered ferel, neglected child seems to be more acurate. http://feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=oxana

Wow, this seems fake. Here's a "documentary" on her by some rather gullible sounding filmmakers:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BsfvSWljqpc

She's running around on her hands and knees and barking -- except when she's being interviewed on camera. (Her knees don't look very calloused, by the way.) I think she may have been a runaway, and may have hung out with dogs to a certain extent, but I think that she and her psychiatric "minders" are exagerating and milking her story for fame and fortune.

I saw a little bit on her on Galileo Mysteries (run in Germany on Pro7, 25.2.2007). They talked to her and she said that she had never been a dog-girl. She seemed coherent enough, though they did mention alcoholic parents and a difficult upbringing.

"BBC Channel 4"
Unless there was some kind of combined effort between TV companies this makes no sense; there is no such thing as "BBC Channel 4". Barring a collaboration, it should simply read "Channel 4". As the BBC have launched a "BBC 4" there is potential for confusion here (aside from simply being wrong).


 * However, just using "Channel 4" is confusing to international readers who don't know anything about British television networks. How about the phrase "British Channel 4" or "Channel 4 in the U.K."?

"Channel 9, Australia - 60 Minutes Report"
60 Minutes Australia just did a report on Oxana in relation to 'nature vs nurture' and used other 'feral kids' as examples for how their development can go horribly wrong without interaction with family.

"reference" tag
Why was this article adorned with a reference tag when there are several external links to prove everything? Why don't people take the time to read them? The overuse of all kind of tags in the English Wikipedia is really annoying. --Maxl 14:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * None of the sources seem to mention how she obtained a so-called acuse sense of hearing, smell, etc., and something as incredible as that must be referenced in-line. I have restored the template.

222.158.162.143 07:30, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It has references but it's missing citations. Simple.--h i s  s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 05:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

About her really acute sences,I was raised in the country,so even when I was in school the moment I got home,I'd spend an hour or 2 after doing my home work in the forest roaming around and would spend most of the day on the weekends and during the summer months roaming the woods,and hence developed a stronger sence of smell,the ability to easily spot small animals like squirrel's in trees for instance where my freinds who lived in town had a hard time to spot them,so her accute sences are no surprise to me. -Temple of the freespirit.

wait, what? acute senses?
Behaving like a dog when dogs raised you? That's understandable.

But this?

"and was found to have acquired extremely acute senses of hearing, smell, and sight."

How is this possible? You're still biologically a human, you don't gain superpowers just by living with other animals. If this is indeed true, is there a reasonable scientific explanation for this? It might behoove the article to elaborate on this, if it isn't hogwash. I myself am skeptical of this claim, even if it was parroted in a documentary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.21.37.71 (talk) 04:15, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I would guess that she simply learned to pay far better attention to those senses than most people who grew up in more ordinary circumstances - similar to the way that blind people, particularly those born blind, or blinded young, often have sharper hearing than average --86.30.108.143 (talk) 13:17, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The strength of our senses has very little to do with their perceived clarity.--Senor Freebie (talk) 11:15, 7 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the claim of acute senses is a very small snippet/infotoid that is not really even necessary include or debate in an article about Oxana. There is most likely no possible reference that would prove she had special senses.  At most, some layperson may have thought this and said this, but that would not be grounds for inclusion in a wikipedia article, especially if there is no reference.  If doctors tested her senses, that would be a different story.  I suggest that the whole "senses" argument/issue be expunged from this article due to minor/insignificant relevance and no references.  The proper place for it, if any, would be on the Feral Child page. Louis 76.122.50.195 (talk) 03:33, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Serious Editing Needed to separate facts from fiction
It's important to note that Oksana is a real person, still alive, and deserves the highest amount of respect that we can provide. As such, I'll delete portions of the article which are inconsistent with the latest facts, and I believe this is totally within the guidelines and spirit of Wikipedia.

The documentary Raised Wild at http://animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/raised-wild/videos/dog-girl-of-ukraine.htm contains an updated and well-researched documentary about Oksana. Someone with more time than I can extract some of the facts from this to fill the page. The documentary does a good job to dispel the myths of a feral childhood. There were no dogs at her home. Oksana was removed from her home at an early age due to neglect, and not anything to do with dogs. Over a period of some years, she was placed in orphanages that had dogs. She bonded emotionally with the dogs, and progressively adopted more and more dog-like behaviors, which severely stunted her social and language skills. She has since been rehabilitated and works on a farm.

Note there are other accounts of Oksana which do add additional information, but those other accounts also propagate the myth of a feral childhood without any proof or reference. Only the Raised Wild documentary produces solid evidence that clarifies facts about Oksana's childhood. In particular, the idea that she lived outside in a shed with dogs was discredited. Louis 76.122.50.195 (talk) 20:45, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * There is not much left in there to explain her notability. For An Angel (talk) 21:58, 4 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Her notability can be described in terms of press coverage, interviews, and documentaries. For example, it's interesting and informative that the therapy had eliminated her dog behaviors as of age 13, at which time she was the subject of a Russian documentary (about 1996).  They asked her to  demonstrate how she used to bark and act like a dog.  This is the video that all documentaries show.  It's reported that she was not comfortable with the idea but was influenced by the reporters to do this, and subsequently she regressed and started acting like a dog again, undoing many years of therapy.  In the Animal Planet documentary, it was explained that she was the subject of many tabloids in the Ukraine which mixed fact with sensationalized or outright fabricated accounts about her childhood.  So I think the biography can stick to the facts as supported by reference, and perhaps a separate section can discuss / dispute the story about her living in a shed with dogs.  Another possibility is to separate her biography into sections, perhaps based on where she lived, because that seems to provide a good division of when the dog behavior began, why it began, when therapy started, etc.  Louis 76.122.50.195 (talk) 03:06, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Feral?
It seems she was never a feral child. She was in orphanages. There she hung out with the dogs rather than children. Her problem was behavioural and mental retardation, not being brought up by dogs at all.203.184.41.226 (talk) 00:00, 23 February 2013 (UTC)