Oxana Malaya, who is now in her 40s, started acting like a dog, barking, growling, and walking on all fours.

You might have heard the story of Tarzan and Mowgli, wild animals raised in the jungle. While these stories are interesting, they seem far-fetched. But there have been real-life stories of animals raising children. Oxana Malaya from Ukraine is one such case. She claims to have spent her childhood with dogs. According to the New York Post, her life took an extraordinary turn when her alcoholic parents left her outside in the cold at the age of 3. Desperate for warmth and shelter, she followed her pet dog into the kennel and stayed there for nearly five years.

During this time, Ms. Malaya, now in her 40s, started to act like an animal, such as barking, growling, and walking on all fours. Speaking about her unusual upbringing, Ms Malaya said, “Mom had too many kids; we didn’t have enough beds. So I crawled into the dog’s kennel and started living with her”. She said that she made a home for herself inside her dog’s kennel to survive. She lived there with the dog for the next five years of her life, from the age of 3 to 9.

She said that her dog and other strays in the neighborhood treated her like their own. But by the time she was rescued, she had already lost her speaking ability and was running around on all fours. “I would talk to them, they would bark, and I would repeat it. That was how we spoke to each other,” she said.

Ms Malaya also licked herself clean, ate raw meat, looked through rubbish bins for food, and panted. “She was more like a little dog than a human child,” said Anna Chalaya, the director of the special care institution where Malaya now lives. “She would show her tongue when she saw water and would eat with her tongue, not her hands,” Ms Chalaya said, as reported by the outlet.

At nine, Ms. Malaya was finally rescued after the authorities in Ukraine were alerted about her strange behavior. But it was difficult to rescue her. A group of dogs fought to protect her from the police. It wasn’t until the officials distracted the dogs with food that they could take the girl out of the kennel.

She was taken to a foster home, where she learned to walk and talk but still behaved like a dog. Even as an adult, experts said she had the mental capacity of a 6-year-old.

“I don’t think she’ll ever be able to read or do anything useful,” said child psychologist Lyn Fry about Ms Malaya. “If you haven’t learned to speak by the time you’re about 5, it’s doubtful you’ll learn later,” she explained.

The Post says that Ms. Malaya is just one of about 100 known cases of people who have not learned to speak a language. She was reunited with her mother and father in the early 2000s.