MOSCOW (AFP) – - A five-year-old girl Russian who was shut away with dogs and cats is adapting to normal life after being rescued and transferred to a clinic, doctors said Thursday.

The girl had apparently not been allowed outside the filthy apartment in Eastern Siberia where she had been found living with the animals, sparking comparisons with the character Mowgli from the “Jungle Book”.

“Everything is fine. Other medical tests will be carried out but she is in good health,” the director of the rehabilitation centre Tatyana Missnik told the RIA Novosti news agency.

“The one problem is that at five years old she doesn’t speak. We don’t know why.”

Television pictures showed the dilapidated apartment where the girl, identified only as Natasha, lived on the outskirts of the Siberian city of Chita.

The battered door of the flat had a sign reading “Warning: She Bites”, presumably referring to one of the dogs.

Police announced Wednesday that child protection officers had taken the girl into care at the “Nadezhda” (Hope) children’s rehabilitation centre.

Full Story@ AFP/Yahoo SG