The twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, are said to have been abandoned as infants and had to be nursed by a wolf until a wandering shepherd found them. After all, the wolf had taken care of them there, on Palatine Hill, where they eventually built the great city. Though several historical accounts describe instances of infants being reared by animals, this is probably simply a fiction. Sometimes the stories of these feral children can serve as a testament to both the human will to survive and the compassionate maternal instinct of other animals. When Rochom P’ngieng was eight years old, he became lost and vanished out of sight while herding buffalo along the edge of the jungle in Cambodia. In 2007, eighteen years later, a peasant saw a naked woman trying to steal rice by creeping around his land. Recognized by a characteristic scar on her back as the long-lost Rochom P’ngieng, the girl had matured into a thirty-year-old lady who had managed to life alone in the deep jungle. In May 2010, unable to adjust to the local way of life or acquire the language, she returned to the wild. Since then, there have been conflicting claims on her whereabouts, one of which said that she reappeared in June 2010 in a deep, underground toilet close to her home.
