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Aye-aye

Daubentonia madagascariensis


Where is it found?

Picture
Tropical forest

Diet and foraging method

Eats animals and plants
Aye-ayes use their specialised middle finger for extracting insect larvae from decaying wood, scooping out coconut pulp and testing the quantity of milk within a coconut.
Eats fruit
Eats seeds
Eats nectar
Eats insects

Key adaptations

The Aye-aye uses its long middle finger to tap a tree and its large ears to listen for grubs under the bark. It then exposes them by gnawing into the bark with its rodent-like front teeth, and extracting them with its long middle finger.

Social organisation and mating system

Picture
Solitary
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Promiscuous

Did you know that...?

That the Aye-aye is the world's largest nocturnal mammal and is seen as a bad omen by locals, thus is still hunted despite being endangered.

Taxonomy

Picture

Picture credits:

Maps from: http://species.mol.org/species/
"Aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) 2" by Tom Junek - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aye-aye_(Daubentonia_madagascariensis)_2.jpg#/media/File:Aye-aye_(Daubentonia_madagascariensis)_2.jpg
"Aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) 1" by Tom Junek - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aye-aye_(Daubentonia_madagascariensis)_1.jpg#/media/File:Aye-aye_(Daubentonia_madagascariensis)_1.jpg
"Aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) 3" by Tom Junek - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aye-aye_(Daubentonia_madagascariensis)_3.jpg#/media/File:Aye-aye_(Daubentonia_madagascariensis)_3.jpg

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