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An aye-aye clinging to a branch at night, its huge orange eyes reflecting the light

Beastfile · Mammals

Aye-Aye

Daubentonia madagascariensis

A nocturnal lemur that hunts grubs by tapping on wood and listening.

Overview

The aye-aye is the largest nocturnal primate and one of the stranger animals in Madagascar, which is a competitive field. It finds food by percussive foraging: it taps a branch with a long thin middle finger, listens with oversized ears for the hollow sound of a tunnel underneath, gnaws through the wood with rodent-like incisors that never stop growing, and hooks the grub out with that same finger. No other primate does this. The combination of teeth, ears and a skeletal probing finger has no close parallel in the group, and for a long time the aye-aye was misclassified as a rodent.

An aye-aye in darkness showing its large bare ears and coarse black fur

Origin

Endemic to Madagascar, in rainforest, dry forest and coastal forest, and increasingly in cultivated land near what woodland remains.

Habitat

Rainforest

Notable Traits

  • •Locates grubs by tapping wood and listening for hollows
  • •A skeletal middle finger with a ball-and-socket joint for extracting them
  • •Continuously growing incisors, unusual for a primate
  • •The largest nocturnal primate in the world
  • •Enormous ears tuned to faint sounds inside timber

Conservation

Endangered. Habitat loss is the main pressure, compounded in some communities by a superstition treating the animal as an omen of misfortune, which leads to aye-ayes being killed on sight.

🤯 Fun Facts