The flying lemur (Galeopithecus philippensis Waterhouse), kagwang in Bohol, is a significant animal in indigenous lore. Known as tungaling in Bagobo, there’s a prevailing belief that it possesses mysterious qualities, especially therapeutic power or charmed virtue, especially its hair. The Bagobos equate the magical value of the animal with the crow and the monkey. But, more importantly, it is prized for its supposed medicinal properties.
Laura Estelle Watson Benedict, in A study of Bagobo ceremonial, magic and myth (1916), wrote about the importance of the flying lemur in treating the karokung, described as a common illness that carries the symptoms of chills, fever, and tormenting cough. More imaginary than realistic, the sickness, which affects men mostly, is imposed by a fabled woman:
“Karokung… is to be traced to a white woman who lives in rivers and is said to be very beautiful. Her hair is long and dark; her feet black, or blue and black, while her legs, too, are black to a line half-way up to the knees. The rest of her body is white. She is very amorous, desiring to embrace every man she sees, and it is this propensity of hers that throws men into burning fever. When high fever is running, she is said to be putting the man into the fire, but directly afterwards she plunges into the river, and forthwith the patient begins to shiver. Nobody has ever seen the Karokung woman, but many people have dreamed about her, and thus her characteristics are completely established.”
However, if the person affected is a Bagobo woman, tradition blames the illness on a white man with long hair who also lives in the river and acts like the karokung woman.
In curing the disease, the patient inhales the smoke of the burned turtledove nest or to smell the vapors coming from the burned wisps of hair taken from the coat of the flying lemur. In the absence of both nest and lemur hairs, a simple farm offering to the god will suffice. The use of smoke by burning vegetable secretions or the hair of the kagwang is known in Bagobo as gubo.
In another instance, if a person is sick with sore mouth, courtesy of the left-hand soul, the Bagobo gimokud tebang, he can be treated “by tying in a rag a few hairs of the flying lemur, and wearing the rag attached to the necklace.”
Flying lemurs in pre-American era were domesticated or bred. Their skin was used in making hats and employed to catch coconut beetles. Known as an insectivorous, the animal, as described in the Philippine Agricultural Review (1918), is between 60 to 70 cm long, mouse gray to golden brown in color, and has white markings on its undersides. It catches beetle and feeds on the leaves of a jackfruit or a breadfruit. Its meat is poisonous to dogs.
Mistaken as a mythical evil creature, the flying lemur has been erroneously blamed for the shadowy death of livestock, does not bring bad luck and is not a bad omen. It does not feed on meat because it only eats plant, does not destroy crops, and does not suck blood.
What is not fully valued is the mammal’s role in the food chain and in the diet of other wildlife, including the Philippine eagle. Worse, they are hunted for their meat.
Though wrongly called a flying creature, the Philippine lemur glides and jumps. It is an animal that belongs to the order Dermoptera and is more accurately known as the Philippine colugo (Cynocephalus Volans Linn.) and is one of two species of flying lemurs in the country, the other is Sunda flying lemur (Galeopterus variegatus).
Wikipedia provides a clear and elaborate description about this rare and beautiful animal:
“The Philippine flying lemur is arboreal and nocturnal, and usually resides in primary and secondary forests. However, some wander into coconut, banana, and rubber plantations as deforestation for farming and industry is an increasingly prevalent problem. The colugo sleeps in hollow trees or clings onto branches in dense foliage during daytime. When they engage in this hanging behavior from branches, they keep their heads upright, unlike bats.
“On the ground, colugos are slow and clumsy, and not able to stand erect, so they rarely leave the canopy level of the forest, where they glide from tree to tree to get to food or their nests which are also high in the trees.
“In the trees, though, colugos are quite effective climbers, though they are slow; they move in a series of lingering hops as they use their claws to move up the tree trunk. Foraging only at night, colugos on average forage for 9.4 minutes about 12 times per night. They typically leave their nests at dusk to begin their foraging activity.
“When foraging, returning to the nest, or just moving around, [it] uses its patagium to glide from tree to tree. The patagium is also used for cloaking the colugo when it is clinging to a tree trunk or branch, and sometimes it is even seen curled up in a ball, using its patagium again as a cloaking mechanism among palm fronds often in coconut plantations.”
