Balitang Kababayan reports that an unexplained event occurred in a small village in the northern Philippines on February 3, 2003. Many of the village’s inhabitants lost the ability to speak for approximately two hours, after which time their speech abruptly returned.
The affected people tended to be women and children, and the article implies that the affected animals were mostly birds of varying species which leads to some speculation that a certain frequency range was affected. Tropical diseases do exist which affect the hearing of the infected, but would they only affect a certain range, and only for two hours?