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Aye-Aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis)

Island Of Madagascar

Off The East Coast of Africa

Palmarium Reserve

 

Endangered lemur photographed at night aided by a guide holding a spotlight.

 

The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger.

 

It is the world's largest nocturnal primate and is characterized by its unusual method of finding food; it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood using its forward slanting incisors to create a small hole in which it inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out.

 

From an ecological point of view the aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker, as it is capable of penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within.

 

The aye-aye is the only extant member of the genus Daubentonia and family Daubentoniidae. It is currently classified as Endangered by the IUCN.

 

The aye-aye is an arboreal animal meaning that it spends most of its life high in the trees. Aye-ayes sleep, eat, travel and mate in the trees and are mostly found close to the canopy where there is plenty of cover from the dense foliage. – Wikipedia

 

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Uploaded on August 15, 2023
Taken on November 27, 2017