Madagascan Aye-Aye

Daubentonia madagascariensis. Madagascar. Mounted specimen,1907.

Aye-ayes, primates in the lemur group threatened by extinction, are seldom displayed in natural history museums, although they are remarkable in several ways.

FINGER FOOD
Aye-ayes are found exclusively on Madagascar. They live in rainforests and deciduous forests, as well as in mangroves, even venturing onto plantations on occasion. As their large eyes suggest, they are nocturnal. They spend the day in oviform nests of leaves high in the crowns of trees. Their most striking features are their large hands and feet, with extremely long fingers and toes with claws. When climbing and jumping, their thin fingers can be curled up for protection.
As omnivores, aye-ayes eat insects and their larvae, as well as fruits, fungi, and nectar. To get to the larvae of longhorn beetles, they have developed an ingenious hunting technique: they tap tree trunks to find hollow chambers and locate possible prey with their extremely keen hearing. Then they gnaw a hole in the bark and extract the larvae using their elongated third finger. A nictitating membrane – a “third eyelid” – protects their eyes from flying wood chips as they gnaw.
They use a similar technique to crack coconuts: first they tap on the fruit to determine how much milk and fruit flesh it contains. An aye-aye only needs two minutes to gnaw through the hard shell. Then the elongated finger is also used as a spoon and moved quickly back and forth to carry the milk and fruit flesh to the aye-aye’s mouth.
Aye-ayes communicate using different noises. When fleeing, they give a two-syllable “hay-hay” call, which earned them the name aye-aye. Amongst the inhabitants of Madagascar, varying by region and culture, they are considered to be either an evil omen or a harbinger of good luck.