Just over a yearago, in my Alien Zoo column for the British monthly magazine Fortean Times, I introduced readers to acryptozoological conundrum that had been puzzling me ever since I firstencountered it during the 1990s, and which dated back a further six decades, toa 1930s news report from the periodical ModernWonder.

In December 2024,moreover, I also documented it on ShukerNature (click here to read my blog article) The report,dated 27 May 1939, claimed that some mysterious beasts had been captured by aphotographer in the jungles of Malaya (now Malaysia) and had been shown to someofficials in Manila, capital of the Philippines, but that no-one had been ableto identify them.

They were each saidto be quadrupedal and to weigh approximately 200 lb, to possess a raccoon-likehead (masked?), a furry mole-like pelage (dense and/or dark?), a pair of owl-likeeyes (very large and indicating a nocturnal lifestyle?), an odd dentitioncombining human-like teeth with cat-like teeth, a fondness for bananas, and –by far their most bizarre feature – each animal possessed two tongues! (Hence Ihave dubbed their mystifying species the two-tongues.)

 

I'd speculated inAZ and on ShukerNature that were it not for their substantial weight and,needless to say, their extraordinary twin-tongued condition, these cryptidsmight conceivably have been Malaysian tarsiers, as those very small andsingle-tongued but decidedly goblinesque creatures always arouse considerable curiosityfrom observers unfamiliar with them.

Having documentedthis mystifying case in various of my writings without eliciting any opinionsfrom readers as to what these animals may be, I now hoped that AZ and ShuikerNatureaficionados might prove more forthcoming. And sure enough, at long last I havereceived a suggestion, made by two different ShukerNature readers whollyindependently of each other, that may finally have solved this tantalising riddle.

One reader gavehis name as Lars Dietz, the other chose to remain anonymous, but both broughtto my attention in December 2024 the fascinating fact that lorises – those big-eyed,nocturnal, densely-furred, fruit-eating, Asian relatives of Africa's pottos andbushbabies, as well as Madagascar's lemurs – possess a veritable second tongue,the sublingua. Consisting of a relatively large, muscular tongue-like structurepositioned beneath the primary tongue, and also possessed by the lorises' above-namedAfrican and Madagascan relatives, and by the tarsiers too, it lacks taste buds,its function instead being to keep clean another dental characteristic of suchcreatures, the toothcomb, which is used in oral grooming. Outwardly, however,the sublingua does look like a second genuine tongue.

 

Consequently, itis easy to understand how a loris – or a tarsier – may have been described as atwo-tongued creature by anyone with no previous experience of it. Having saidthat: as lorises and tarsiers exist in the Philippines as well as in Malaysiait seems strange that they would not have been recognised by officials there.

Also, of course,there is the not inconsiderable matter of the two-tongues' claimed weight of 200lb to explain, which is far greater than that of lorises and tarsiers – unlessthe report had been garbled during its documentation in Modern Wonder, with the animals' true weight having been 200 g, not200 lb. This would compare well with that of lorises and also that of theheaviest tarsiers.

In view of thesublingua's evident anatomical relevance to this crypto-case (not to mention theblack mask-like circles of fur encircling the extremely large eyes of slow lorises,plus their bodies' very dense fur), I feel that some such confusion between themetric and imperial systems of weights may well have occurred, thereby causingthe true taxonomic identity of the two-tongues as either lorises (most probably)or tarsiers to become obscured.

 

Moreover, perhapsthe officials who saw these creatures simply weren't well-versed in theircountry's native fauna anyway. It certainly wouldn't be the first time thatthis situation has been true!

My sincere thanksto those two ShukerNature readers for steering me in what I feel sure is theright direction in resolving this curious cryptozoological puzzle after almosta century.

And be sure to clickhere to read my previous ShukerNature articleon this subject.