SINCE ROMULUS and Remus, the theme of feral children raised by beasts has fascinated man. The myth runs that the twin brothers were abandoned near the River Tiber until suckled by a she-wolf, after which they grew up to found Rome.

Such tales of animals acting as foster parents to babies recur through the ages, elaborated with legends about the superpower attributes of the noble savage or wild child.

So it’s shocking to find that such feral children exist in modern Europe, and in a country with EU aspirations, namely Ukraine. Four years ago, with Russian and Ukrainian colleagues, I began researching feral cases which emerged amid the breakdown of the former Soviet empire. Two of these cases, about Edik and Oksana, feature in tonight’s Channel 4 programme Wild Child, in the Bodyshock series.

Edik is an angelic boy, the son of an alcoholic father and an incompetent mother. He is now seven, but from his earliest years, Edik socialised more with dogs than his often absent parents or his six siblings.

First this was in the family flat in the half-derelict town of Mirny near the Black Sea; then it was in the yard, where there was a shack used by local strays. By the age of three, Edik’s main parents were the strays. He scavenged for food as they did. “There was a strong bond between them,” one witness recalls. “No one cared for the dogs and Edik too was rejected by his family. They looked after each other.”

When social workers finally heeded the warnings from neighbours, the dogs refused to release the boy, who’d be- come a a pack member. He was prised away eventually. “He couldn’t speak and when he saw our cat, he tried to catch her,” says Lyudmila Pohvalnie, who is fostering “Dog Boy”, as he has been called by the Ukrainian press. “When the other children are in bed Edik often whines like a dog. We’re teaching him to eat, sleep, walk and play with kids.”

His behaviour and learning is improving, but at first there was alarm. “Edik would run after his sister Nadia,” Pohvalnie says. “He’d make her squat on her knees as if she were a female dog so that he could act out the part of the male dog.”

Oksana’s case is even more compelling and shocking. When we first saw a film clip of her running around on all fours like a dog, lapping water with her tongue, barking and howling, we suspected a set-up. But her story is true, confirmed by doctors, neighbours and, ultimately, by Oksana.

She was born in 1983. Until the age of three, she lived in the family’s ragged home in the village of Novaya Blagoveschenka. “When she was brought from the hospital she was left on a sofa. Cats and dogs were all over the house. She sucked milk from them,” says Shura Malaya, second wife of Oksana’s father Alexander.

Accounts vary as to why she was thrown out of the house. Neighbours say that her parents one day locked her out in the cold, and she scrambled into the kennel and cuddled up to a black dog. Oksana now says: “My mum wanted a boy — so she threw me out and I slept in the kennel.”

She stayed there for six years. Her parents began to think of her as a dog, chaining her up when they went out. For years no one did anything. Finally, as Malaya recounts, Oksana was taken into care, after a belated alert by the farm manager. Since then she has lived in a mental institution. Despite this nightmare, which has set back her development by eight years, there is little naturally wrong with her. “The only thing we can do is correct her behaviour so she gets used to living with human beings,” says Dr Vladimir Nagorny.

Even today dogs seem attracted to this lonely girl. She reverts easily to her earlier behaviour. Until recently, when she was frightened, she instinctively barked. When she gain-ed the power of speech, after years of teaching, she referred to the mongrel as her mother.

Other cases, not covered by tonight’s film, highlight that these are not isolated examples. In 1996, Vanya, then four, found himself on the streets of a Moscow suburb after his father was imprisoned and his mother abandoned him. For two years, in freezing conditions, he lived outside with stray dogs. “They cuddled me and licked my face,” he told social workers. “They were better friends than grown-ups.” By day he begged for food, which he shared with the dogs who, as with Edik, became his protectors. When he was put in a children’s home the strays found him, and howled at the gates. They were later put down by local dog catchers.

There was also the case of Nina, a mentally handicapped adult whose parents could not cope with her. They shut her in their cowshed in Soviet Ukraine in 1978. She was released in 2001, when she was found naked and filthy, suffering from malnutrition. For 23 years she had lived and behaved as an animal — grunting and mooing to communicate, never speaking, and walking on all fours. She had lived with cattle, turkeys, dogs, and sheep, her parents flinging in food for all of them each day.

Only one of the above cases was examined by a Western expert. Dr James Law, a professor of language and communication at City University, met Edik. His conclusion seems to be that as Edik had received some human contact from his mother and siblings, and because he was rescued in time, he will recover in terms of language and development. The same seems true of Vanya: it is harder for Oksana and Nina. Too much of their life was snatched from them.

Bodyshock: Wild Child, 9pm tonight, Channel 4