THE TANTALISING TWO-TONGUES IDENTIFIED AFTER ALMOST A CENTURY?

 

A representation of what a two-tongues may have looked like based solely upon the original report's verbal description of this mystery mammal, created by me using Magic Studio

Just over a year ago, in my Alien Zoo column for the British monthly magazine Fortean Times, I introduced readers to a cryptozoological conundrum that had been puzzling me ever since I first encountered it during the 1990s, and which dated back a further six decades, to a 1930s news report from the periodical Modern Wonder.

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 a photographer in the jungles of Malaya (now Malaysia) and had been shown to some officials in Manila, capital of the Philippines, but that no-one had been able to identify them.

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

 

Native to Malaysia and Indonesia, a Sunda slow loris Nycticebus coucang – note the distinctive black mask-like markins encircling its extremely large eyes and its very dense fur (© David Haring. Duke Lemur Center. North Carolina/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

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

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

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

 

In this close-up photograph of a slow loris's face, its pale, pointed sublingua can be clearly seen projecting out of its mouth beneath its longer, pink-coloured primary tongue (© David Haring. Duke Lemur Center. North Carolina/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Consequently, it is easy to understand how a loris – or a tarsier – may have been described as a two-tongued creature by anyone with no previous experience of it. Having said that: as lorises and tarsiers exist in the Philippines as well as in Malaysia it 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 200 lb to explain, which is far greater than that of lorises and tarsiers – unless the report had been garbled during its documentation in Modern Wonder, with the animals' true weight having been 200 g, not 200 lb. This would compare well with that of lorises and also that of the heaviest tarsiers.

In view of the sublingua's evident anatomical relevance to this crypto-case (not to mention the black 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 the metric and imperial systems of weights may well have occurred, thereby causing the true taxonomic identity of the two-tongues as either lorises (most probably) or tarsiers to become obscured.

 

Tarsiers are nothing if not goblinesque, even otherworldly, in appearance, especially to anyone unfamiliar with these curious yet harmless creatures (© LDC Inc Foundation/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence / (© Pieere Fidenci/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

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

My sincere thanks to those two ShukerNature readers for steering me in what I feel sure is the right direction in resolving this curious cryptozoological puzzle after almost a century.

And be sure to click here to read my previous ShukerNature article on this subject.

 

Another of my most probably now-obsolete (but still visually-engaging) two-tongues reconstructions, based solely upon the Modern Wonders report's verbal description of these creatures, and created by me using Magic Studio

 

THE TAILED SLOW LORISES OF ASSAM'S LUSHAI HILLS - AN ENDURING PRIMATOLOGICAL MYSTERY

Only known photograph of tailed lorises from Assam's Lushai Hills (PZSL/public domain)

Whereas some cryptids attract and retain widespread interest and attention, others are forgotten almost as soon as they are documented, even though their mystery remains unsolved. Sadly, the tailed slow lorises of the Lushai Hills fall into the latter category of cryptozoology.

Two of these white-coated, woolly-furred prosimians were captured and photographed by a Mr T.D. La Touche of the Geological Survey of India during December 1889 (though not documented until 1908), in the jungle near Fort Lungleh in Assam's Lushai Hills, during the Lushai Expedition of 1889-90. However, they escaped shortly afterwards, and were not recaptured. Overall, they seemed akin to the familiar slow lorises of the genus Nycticebus, as they possessed short but stout limbs, a large rounded head, flat face and small muzzle, short roundish ears, large eyes each encircled by a dark triangular patch, and a narrow black stripe running from the skull's occipital region along the entire length of the back.

The Indian slow loris Nycticebus bengalensis, which only possesses a vestigial tail, depicted in a painting from 1867

However, as clearly revealed in the photograph opening this present ShukerNature blog post, and which originally appeared in a short article by Dr Nelson Annandale, Superintendent of the Indian Museum, documenting them in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London for 17 November 1908, the remarkable loris form represented by these two briefly captive specimens differed dramatically from all other lorises in one very conspicuous way - it had a thick bushy tail! In stark contrast, the tail of all known species of slow loris is vestigial.

Moreover, confirming that the tail was not simply an optical illusion within the photograph, Mr La Touche assured Dr Annandale that it was indeed present in both of the captive animals. And in a postscript of 5 January 1909 to his PZSL article, Annandale announced that he had learnt from a Colonel E.W. Loch that the tailed slow loris of the Lushai Hills was well known to him too.

Close-up of one of the captive tailed slow lorises of Lushai Hills, clearly revealing its long thick tail (PZSL/public domain)

Consequently, unless it is a teratological, freak variety of the Indian slow loris N. bengalensis, the tailed slow loris of Lushai Hills constitutes a radically new species of slow loris still awaiting official recognition - for which, in my book, The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993), I proposed Nycticebus caudatus ('tailed slow loris') as a suitable name.

Perhaps the greatest riddle of all, however, is why such a visually distinct form of loris has apparently never been reported since the 1908 PZSL account's 1909 postscript, not even by local Indian naturalists who would surely have been fascinated by such a creature. Judging from Col. Loch's statement that it was well known to him, the two captured specimens were not the only ones that existed back in the early 20th Century, so what has happened since then - has this unique form died out? Clearly, the mystery of the tailed slow lorises of the Lushai Hills endures, even if, tragically, the lorises themselves no longer do.

This ShukerNature blog post is an expanded excerpt from my book The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals (Coachwhip: Landisville, 2012).