He Aye Aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a nocturnal lemur endemic to Madagascar that has an additional pair of "pseudothumbs", which is why it has twelve fingers on its hands.
It was previously believed that they were fleshy protrusions, but deeper analysis has revealed that they are made up of bone and carilage.
This extra finger on each hand is the finger he uses to bore holes in rotten logs and extract larvae. So the ayeaye with too short fingers had a harder time surviving and reproducing..
In addition, the finger has other really striking functions, such as detecting its prey by drumming the trunk with it to capture the change in tone that reveals the presence of an insect inside.
The results of the ayeaye study were published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, on October 21, 2019.
And it's very ugly
This creature lives in Madagascar, and there it is hunted mercilessly simply because it looks demonic. The natives of Madagascar, then, consider that this animal is possessed by evil spirits and that its mere existence is a risk to the world: there is even the extravagant idea that if you point your third finger at a person, they will die suddenly shortly after. : your middle finger is substantially longer and thinner than the rest, Nosferatu style.
The ayeaye is a nocturnal animal, it feeds on larvae and its tail is usually longer than the rest of its body; It weighs two to three kilograms and can live up to 23 years.
So ugly and distorted is the ayeaye that the writer Douglas Adams He dedicated these nice words to him in Tomorrow they won't be, a travel book with the zoologist Mark Carwardine:
It is a very strange-looking creature that seems to be composed of loose pieces of other animals. It looks a bit like a big cat with bat ears, beaver teeth, a tail resembling a large ostrich feather, a middle finger resembling a long dry branch, and a pair of enormous eyes that seem to look at a totally different world that lies ahead. behind our backs...
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The news
This is the primate with the most fingers: it has twelve (and it is very ugly)
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.