Word: feral
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...While trying to steer them toward normal lives, their carers will also have to decide the extent to which the Fritzls are not just patients, but scientific subjects. In the 1970s, studies of a feral child, "Genie," who hadn't spoken with humans until the age of 13, helped to confirm several hypotheses relating to how language is acquired. Psychologists will likely be equally interested in studying the psychosocial development of the Fritzl children in such a deprived environment...
...January, three teenagers from northwestern England were convicted of kicking to death 47-year-old Garry Newlove after he tried to stop them vandalizing his car. In the wake of their trial, the Sun newspaper declared "the most important issue now facing Britain" to be "the scourge of feral youngsters." That isn't just tabloid talk. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, at his first press conference of 2008, said: "Kids are out of control ... They're roaming the streets. They're out late at night. There's an issue about gangs in Britain and an issue about gun crime as well...
...uphill chore to socialize them, to get them to come into more relaxed contact with humans. They probably come from a feral cat background, and were not touched or socialized as babies. You're working against their genetic and early childhood experience. But you can get them out of it with an understanding of what makes a cat tick, which is not to go to them and not to try to urge, coax or demand anything of them. You have to let them come to you and ask for it. That of course takes a lot of patience...
...hawk to a cougar to a raccoon. For [other cat owners,] the No. 1 killer of cats is cars. The average lifespan of an indoor-outdoor cat is seven years. The average lifespan of an indoor cat is 21 years. So that pretty much says it. Outside, you have feral cats carrying disease; you have dogs that attack; you have cars, cars, cars. So, the current thinking is that [house]cats may not be outside without an enclosure...
Creativity, Capecchi once said, comes from "the abrasive juxtaposition" of life experiences. His old life and new one certainly rubbed each other raw. Some teachers wrote off the feral boy who had never set foot in a school and spoke no English; but others gave him paints and told him to make murals to communicate. One day he was beating up the other third-graders, since that was what he knew how to do. And soon he was beating up older kids on behalf of his peers. "That gave me a position," he says, "some social standing...