It was first noticed in 1797 in a remote area of France. The child looked to be nine years old. Later that year, the peasants managed to catch him, but the wolf boy found a way out of the barn and fled to his native forest. A little more than a year later, Victor — as they began to call him — was again caught and, without thinking twice, fled to freedom. The search continued all winter (why the peasants needed it is another question), but Victor was never found.
However, in 1800, the child wolf was again caught near La Basina and then it was not possible to escape. Victor was examined by Pierre-Joseph Bonater, who later wrote the scientific work Historical Notes on the Savage from Aveyron.
Observation of the wolf boy gave amazing results. Like all wolf children, Victor was irritable, slept during the day and made strange sounds instead of speech. The boy’s skin was not sensitive to pain, he could pull burning logs out of the fire with his bare hands. The sense of smell was also unique. He did not feel some smells at all, even if the object was brought to his very nose. Amazing hearing was tested in experiments. The boy did not flinch when a cannon was fired next to him, but reacted to very weak sounds, flinched at the sound of footsteps, at the slight crunch of a branch and any slight rustle. The boy was little susceptible to the cold, even in cold winters he spent the night in the forest naked and could easily feed himself there. The boy fell asleep, as according to the regime, with the onset of the first twilight and woke up with the first rays of the sun. He could not understand that he was seeing his reflection in the mirror, but he liked to look at the reflection in the calm water of the pond. At night, he gazed fascinated at the moon. He could not distinguish the sounds of music and did not distinguish the human voice from other sounds. He was not interested in peers, their games and toys. He indifferently kindled a fire from the received wooden toys, and, moreover, he did not know how to smile. For human life, he was a moron, human relationships were given to him with difficulty. Even a monkey adapts better to the company of people than this child of man. Among people, at the Paris Institute of the Deaf and Dumb, Victor lived for 40 years, doing simple housework, but he never learned to speak.