aye aye // canavarlar

aye

Aye-aye
Scientific name: Daubentonia madagascariensis

Country: Madagascar

Continent: Africa

Diet: Nuts - nucivore, nectar from Traveler's palm - nectarivore, insect
grubs - lavivore

Food & feeding: Omnivore

Habitats: Tropical rainforest, tropical dry forest

Conservation status: Endangered

Relatives: Ring-tailed lemur, Mongoose lemur, Indri

Description: The Aye-aye is a medium-sized nocturnal lemur, weighing
approximately 3 kg. That is about where the similarity to any other lemur
ends. The rest of the animal is an extraordinary compilation of features
that look like they have come from other animals. The head is equipped
with large dish-like ears that can be rotated independently, capable of
picking up the slightest sound at night. The front incisor teeth grow
continuously, rather like a squirrel, so that they never wear down. The
eyes are large and orange and the nose is pink. The fingers on the hands
are all very long - and the middle finger especially so - it looks almost like a
skeleton finger with skin stretched over the top. Quite an animal!

Lifestyle: The forests of Madagascar have no woodpeckers. The Aye-aye is
a lemur that has evolved to feed almost like a woodpecker. At night, it
clambers around dead trees and taps the bark all over with its skinny
middle finger. If the bark sounds hollow the Aye-aye stops and uses its
supersensitive hearing to listen for the movements of insect grubs
beneath the bark. When it hears something, it rips the bark up using its
long, powerful front teeth and then uses that skinny middle finger to fish
the grub out of its hole - rather like eating cheese on a cocktail stick. It
also uses its sharp teeth to gnaw into coconuts and other seeds, again
using the middle finger to scoop the soft insides out.

Family & friends: Aye-ayes are solitary creatures. Males cover up to four
kilometres a night, in large overlapping territories. Chance meetings are
often aggressive. When the females are ready to mate, males often fight
each other for the privilege.

Keeping in touch: On their travels, Aye-ayes leave messages for others in
the form of urine scent marks and by rubbing special glands in their neck,
cheeks and bottom onto branches. Females call in the dead of night to
attract males when they are ready to mate - their calls are often answered
by more than one male.

Growing up: After a pregnancy that last about 160 days, a single baby is
born. The young Aye-aye feeds on its mother's milk for a year - and this
long weaning period means that the mother can only care for a baby every
two or three years. In captivity, Aye-ayes have been known to live for up
to 23 years.

Conservation news: The aye-aye is the centre of many local superstitious
beliefs - some of which protect the Aye-aye, but others result in
persecution. Due to deforestation and persecution, the population
dramatically declined in size and, by the 1980s, only a few scattered
individuals were thought to remain. Recent research has shown that Aye-
ayes are more widely distributed than previously thought and sightings
have thankfully increased. A protected Aye-aye reserve off the northeast
coast of Madagascar - Nosy Mangabe - has now been established.