Aye-aye

Fascinating facts about the Aye-aye

• Aye-ayes spend a huge slice of their night hunting by drumming on tree bark at a blistering pace, up to eight taps each second, and then listening for the echo that reveals hidden hollows. This percussive foraging occupies 5-41% of their foraging time, after which they gnaw a hole and pull out grubs with their ultra-thin middle finger. By night they can cover as much as 4 km (2 + ½ mi) while leaping from branch to branch, turning the forest canopy into a massive buffet runway.
• The aye-aye's third digit is a marvel of evolution: a slender, elongated finger with a ball-and-socket joint that can bend so far it reaches the throat through a nostril, letting the animal pick its nose and eat the debris it extracts. No other animal has this joint. Complementing it is a sixth digit, a pseudothumb, that helps the lemur grip branches while it probes wood for insects.
• Aye-ayes are the sole surviving members of an entire primate family, Daubentoniidae, making them a living branch that split from all other lemurs early in evolution. This extreme evolutionary distinctness is highlighted in a recent study that lists the finger-probing aye-aye among species that alone embody millions of years of history. Yet the IUCN now classifies the species as Endangered, meaning that a whole, irreplaceable line of mammalian evolution hangs in the balance.
• Aye-ayes make their homes high in the forest, spending most of their lives in the upper two levels of the canopy where they build spherical nests from leaves, branches and vines. male territories can span up to 32 hectares (80 acres) while females occupy smaller 8.1-hectare (20-acre) patches.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Aye-aye

In the shadowy depths of Madagascar's forests, the aye-aye weaves its mystical path, a long-fingered sorcerer of the night, its spindly limbs unfolding like a dark, ghostly marionette as it searches for insects and seeds to sustain its enigmatic existence. With eyes aglow like lanterns in the dark, this lemur navigates its realm with an uncanny intelligence, its unique blend of primitive and advanced traits rendering it a fascinating, if endangered, denizen of the island's ancient, crumbling landscapes. As it moves, the aye-aye's haunting, unearthly calls echo through the forest, a poignant reminder of the fragility and beauty of this most unusual of creatures.

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