Jeeves' Diary

"Ноmo homini lupus est" tells us Latin proverb that means "man is a wolf to man".
-Is it right, Jeeves? - could say Bertie while sipping a cup of tea.
-Presumably, yes, sir – could reply Jeeves. - But not necessary it might be correct between man and wolf, sir. Rather opposite, after this documentary.

«Shaun Ellis gave up comfort, a family and the civilization that surrounded him, to live with wolves. He is the founder of a wolf sanctuary at the Combe Martin Wildlife Park on England's southwest coast.
"I was always drawn towards the animals more than I was a human society," Ellis said.
At 42 years old, Ellis is 6 feet tall and powerfully built, with a weather-beaten face, piercing blue eyes and shoulder-length brown hair that he lets fall, loose and shaggy, when he is with the wolves. A thin scar from a wolf bite extends beneath his right eye and along his cheekbone. For someone whose life has been devoted to wolves, he looks the part.
In 2004, when the lives of three pups at the sanctuary were at risk because their mother had stopped nursing them, Ellis decided to use years of knowledge he had accumulated to raise the captive pups himself by teaching them how to behave like wolves. He moved in with the young pack and assumed the role of tutor and leader – the alpha wolf.
The experiment was documented by a British television producer, Bernard Walton, whose footage will be broadcast next week on the National Geographic Channel. "What was extraordinary was the relationships that developed between the different wolves and Shaun," Walton said. "He had refined everything down to a fine art – to be a wolf.»
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3015683&page=1

I could have told a lie, if I said I was not impressed by this story. It is not fictional like Mowgli, it is for real. If I had a time machine + supercomputer to simulate the situation of how biologically and psychologically a single human being might be adapted + acting in totally alien zoological system of living and communication, I think I would have scarcely picked out a proper model. In Kipling's book Mowgli was taught by beasts, inferior stage of evolution , yet he ( a protagonist) succeed in speaking both to humans and animals, and had high level of abstract thinking. Actually, if all of it were real, Mowgli virtually would have been not more than a retarded lad with an obvious deficiency in mental capacities like ever-3-year old baby even if he were more than 20. No matter how hard could have been attempts to invoke his verbal and communicative skills, it would be done in vain as his brain had got irreparably stiff to receive such a kind of interactive education..
The funny yet most amazing thing in Shaun's story is that he DOES teach wolves to behave like wolves whereas himself a human being. In this context, he is Stanislavsky of his own Wolf Theater. Isn't it paradoxic? He is able to fully communicate and understand their language + artistically behave as a 100% alpha male wolf despite the fact he is looking physically like a human.

Actually, it is doubly paradoxic as wolves seem to have no slightest doubt if he is not one of them– not the same thing in the cases with zookeepers or naturalists like Gerald Durrel, - in this case whatever warm beast-human relationship are, there is always an invisible identity code that appears ; animals know it and securely keeping their facet toward humans - if human transgress it, he or she would be alienated or attacked…That's why it is a great story.