LIFE : Aye-Aye : Animal Planet

AYE-AYE

Featured in the "Mammals" episode of Life.

Many animals simply have their own species but belong to a larger genus and family made up of related creatures. Not the aye-aye. This unusual organism is so distinct that it's the only member of its very own family (Daubentoniidae) and similar sounding genus (Daubentonia). Scientists have long debated how to classify the aye-aye. At one time, the aye-aye fell in with the rodents. Now it's considered a primate — and the biggest nocturnal one at that.

Overall, aye-ayes are rather small. In captivity, one may weigh nearly 6 pounds (2.7 kilograms). In the wild, an aye-aye tops out around 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms). They grow to about a foot in length, but that's not counting their bushy, squirrel-like tails, which can be longer than their bodies. Except for a few zoos and a notable captive population in the Duke Primate Center, you'll only find aye-ayes in the forests and swamps of Madagascar.

Two things really set the aye-aye apart from other members of the animal kingdom: its bizarre appearance (at least to humans), as well as a third, clawlike finger that stretches longer than its other slender digits. That third finger proves very handy for grooming and digging out entrenched insect larvae.

KNOCK KNOCK

Don't be put off by the aye-aye's appearance. This remarkable creature harvests insects that are normally inaccessible to most animals — and it takes an aye-aye four years to learn how to do it. Hunting during the night, an aye-aye taps her fingers along tree branches at a very high speed, as fast as eight times per second. With her carefully tuned hearing, she listens to the sounds produced, searching for the outlier that indicates a hollowed-out area where beetle grubs lie within. Once she locates her mark, the aye-aye gnaws on the branch until she can stick in her long finger to reach the insects.

Owing to habitat loss, the aye-aye is now considered "near threatened" by the IUCN Red List, with a decline of up to 25 percent between 1984 and 2008. Though aye-ayes pose no threat to people, they have been killed by some Malagasys (people from Madagascar) because of a local belief that when an aye-aye points one of its long fingers at someone, it is marking that person for death. Besides humans, the only other animal that the aye-aye needs to fear is the fossa, a carnivorous mongooselike mammal.

Written by Jacob Silverman, HowStuffWorks

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