Wolves, humans and a new moral order of life

This paper revisits the narrative of Amala and Kamala, two children said to have been raised by wolves, as a platform for exploring the boundary between human beings and other animal species. Chronicled in Diary of the Wolf Children by Joseph Singh, the story of the two girls challenged the view of human uniqueness as it reached social scientists in the 1930s. The paper presents the major interpretations and receptions of the diary and will also evaluate the potential truthfulness of the story. Based on this historiographical assessment of the case, the paper extends to an ontological examination of human-wolf relationships, drawing on advancements in both ethology and anthropology. Since the late 1980s, cultural anthropology has begun to examine cultures as extending beyond the strictly human – a movement often termed “the ontological turn,” allowing for a more holistic examination of realities. Meanwhile, developments in ethology since 1995 have begun to consider animals as conscious beings, capable of experiencing complex emotions. Drawing upon these developments this paper explores the possibility of a new moral order of life, with the two species humans and wolves, and their interactions, as the empirical case.