- This page is about the animal. For the episode, see Aye Aye.
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 third 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 third finger to pull the grubs out. This foraging method is called "percussive foraging", and takes up 5–41% of foraging time. The only other animal species known to find food in this way is the striped possum. 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; and a second species, the giant aye-aye (Daubentonia robusta), appears to have become extinct at some point within the last 1000 years.