True Aye Aye Facts, Curious Little Lemur Animal Cute or Ugly?

True Aye Aye Facts

Is This Curious Little Lemur Animal Cute or Ugly?

I think you’re really going to enjoy “True Aye Aye Facts“. And I promise you will find this video amusing. I’ll list the facts later on. Enjoy!

True Aye Aye Facts – Characteristics

The aye aye is the world’s largest nocturnal primate.
A full-grown aye aye is typically about three feet long with a tail as long as its body.
Among the aye-aye’s signature traits are its fingers. The third finger, which is thinner than the others, is used for tapping on trees to find grubs, while the fourth finger, the longest, is used for pulling bugs out of trees.
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’s ears have a complex geometry of ridges on the inner surface which helps to sharply focus not only echolocation signals from the tapping of its finger but also to passively listen for any other sound produced by the prey.
Females have two nipples located in the region of the groin.

True Aye Aye Facts – Behavior and Lifestyle

The aye aye is a nocturnal and arboreal animal meaning that it spends most of its life high in the trees.
Although they are known to come down to the ground on occasion, Aye Ayes sleep, eat, travel and mate in the trees and are most commonly found close to the canopy where there is plenty of cover from the dense foliage.
During the day Aye Ayes sleep in spherical nests in the forks of tree branches that are constructed out of leaves, branches and vines before emerging after dark to begin their hunt for food.
The Aye Aye is a solitary animal that marks it’s large home range with scent with the smaller territory of a female often overlapping those of at least a couple of males.
Male Aye Ayes tend to share their territories with other males and are even known to share the same nests (although not at the same time), and can seemingly tolerate each other until they hear the call of a female that is looking for a mate.

True Aye Aye Facts – Diet

The Aye Aye commonly eats animal matter, nuts, insect larvae, fruits, nectar, seeds, and fungi, classifying it as an omnivore.
Aye-ayes are particularly fond of ceramicist beetles.
Its teeth are efficient tools for gaining access to the meat of coconuts, while the long middle finger is used to drain the milk.
It picks fruit off trees as it moves through the canopy, often barely stopping to do so.
An aye-aye will opportunistically feed on coconuts, mangoes, sugar cane, lychees and eggs from villages and plantations.
Some research suggests that aye-ayes prefer sap and vegetables to most insects, specifically insects such as grasshoppers, worms, and larvae.

True Aye Aye Facts – Foraging

Aye-ayes tap on the trunks and branches of the trees they visit up to eight times per second and listen to the echo produced to find hollow chambers inside.
The aye aye 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. This foraging method is called percussive foraging.
Once a chamber is found, they chew a hole into the wood and get grubs out of that hole with their narrow and bony middle fingers.
Though foraging is mostly solitary, they will occasionally forage in groups. Individual movements within the group are coordinated using both sound (vocalizations) and scent signals.
Up to 80% of the night is spent foraging in the canopy, separated by occasional rest periods.

True Aye Aye Facts – Movement

The aye aye climbs trees by making successive vertical leaps, much like a squirrel.
Horizontal movement is more difficult, but the aye-aye rarely descends to jump to another tree, and can often cross up to 4 km (2.5 mi) a night.

True Aye Aye Facts – Social Systems

The aye-aye is classically considered ‘solitary’ as they have not been observed to groom each other. However, recent research suggests it is more social than once thought.
It usually sticks to foraging in its own personal home range, or territory.
The home ranges of males often overlap, and the males can be very social with each other.
Female home ranges never overlap, though a male’s home range often overlaps that of several females.
The male aye-ayes live in large areas up to 80 acres (320,000 m²), while females have smaller living spaces that goes up to 20 acres (81,000 m²).
Regular scent marking with their cheeks and neck is how aye-ayes let others know of their presence and repel intruders from their territory.
Like many other pro simians, the female aye-aye is dominant to the male.
They are not typically monogamous, and will often challenge each other for mates.
Male aye-ayes are very assertive in this way, and sometimes even pull other males away from a female during mating.
Males are normally locked to females during mating in sessions that may last up to an hour.
Outside of mating, males and females interact only occasionally, usually while foraging.
The aye-aye is thought to be the only primate which uses echolocation to find its prey.

True Aye Aye Facts – Distribution and Habitat

The aye-aye lives primarily on the east coast of Madagascar. Its natural habitat is the rainforest or deciduous forest, but many live in cultivated areas due to deforesting.
Rainforest aye-ayes, the most common, dwell in canopy areas and are usually sighted upwards of 700 meters altitude.
Aye ayes sleep during the day in nests built in the forks of trees.

True Aye Aye Facts – Conservation

The aye-aye was thought to be extinct in 1933 but was rediscovered in 1957.
Recent research shows the aye-aye is more widespread than was previously thought, and its conservation status was changed to Endangered in 2014.

There are four main reasons why the aye-aye is diminishing in population:

The aye aye is considered evil;
The forests of Madagascar are being destroyed;
The farmers will kill aye-ayes to protect their crops;
Poaching.

There is no simple solution for the two latter. Madagascar is a very impoverished nation, and without the farm land the Malagasy may not be able to survive, because while there is poverty there is also overpopulation. Moreover, the farmers cannot afford to lose crops to aye-ayes and many poachers kill and sell the aye-ayes simply to survive.

As many as 50 aye-ayes can be found in zoological facilities worldwide.

It is currently classified as Endangered by the IUCN; and a second species, Daubentonia robusta, appears to have become extinct at some point within the last 1000 years.

True Aye Aye Facts – Folklore

The aye-aye is a near threatened species not only because its habitat is being destroyed, but also due to native superstition. Besides being a general nuisance in villages, ancient Malagasy legend said the Aye-aye was a symbol of death.

The aye-aye is often viewed as a harbinger of evil and killed on sight. Others believe, if one points its narrowest finger at someone, they are marked for death. Some say the appearance of an aye-aye in a village predicts the death of a villager, and the only way to prevent this is to kill it.

The Sakalava people go so far as to claim aye-ayes sneak into houses through the thatched roofs and murder the sleeping occupants by using their middle finger to puncture the victim’s aorta.

Incidents of aye-aye killings increase every year as its forest habitats are destroyed and it is forced to raid plantations and villages. Because of the superstition surrounding it, this often ends in death.

True Aye Aye Facts – Captive Breeding

The conservation of this species has been aided by captive breeding, primarily at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina. This center has been influential in keeping, researching and breeding aye-ayes and other lemurs. They have sent multiple teams to capture lemurs in Madagascar and have since created captive breeding groups for their lemurs. Specifically, they were responsible for the first aye-aye born into captivity, Blue Devil, and studied how he and the other aye-aye infants born at the center develop through infancy. They have also revolutionized the understanding of the aye-aye diet.