Police in the eastern Siberian city of Chita said Wednesday that they have rescued a 5-year-old feral girl whose father kept her locked in a filthy apartment and who was essentially "raised" by the cats and dogs she lived with.

An anonymous caller tipped police off that the girl, Natasha, was living in "inhumane conditions" with her father, grandparents and other relatives in an apartment in the city's Zheleznodorozhny District, the regional Interior Ministry said in a statement on its web site.

After strong resistance from the girl's relatives, police from child affairs managed to enter the three-room apartment and found Natasha unwashed, in dirty clothes and acting "like an animal," the statement said.

Natasha "attacked" the officers "like a dog," police said. "In all of these years, the child was able to learn the language of animals," the statement said. "She almost can't talk, though she understands human speech."

Doctors have discovered no permanent damage to Natasha's mental development, though when they leave her alone in a room she lunges at the door and barks, the police statement said. While doctors say she has a normal appetite, she forgoes using a spoon and simply licks her plate, it said.

After learning that her daughter was placed in a shelter, Natasha's mother voluntarily went to police for questioning, RIA-Novosti reported.

The whereabouts of the father, 27, are unknown, RIA-Novosti said.

Police plan to open a criminal investigation in connection with child neglect, which is punishable by up to three years of confinement.

Feral children, the stuff of folklore all over the world, usually exhibit the behavior of the animals with which they have had closest contact, a condition known as the Mowgli Syndrome after the fictional child from Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book," who was raised by wolves in the jungle.

Such children have usually built strong ties with the animals with which they lived and find the transition to normal human contact extremely traumatic.

(MT, Reuters)