Species: The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow[3] and a special thin middle finger that they can use to catch grubs and larvae out of tree trunks.

[5][6] The only other living mammal species known to find food in this way are the striped possum and trioks (genus Dactylopsila) of northern Australia and New Guinea, which are marsupials.

[7] 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.

[10] The genus Daubentonia was named after the French naturalist Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton by his student, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, in 1795.

The possession of continually growing incisors (front teeth) parallels those of rodents, leading early naturalists to mistakenly classify the aye-aye within the mammalian order Rodentia[14] and as a squirrel, due to its toes, hair coloring, and tail.

It has been considered a highly derived member of the family Indridae, a basally diverging branch of the strepsirrhine suborder, and of indeterminate relation to all living primates.

Colin Groves upheld this classification in 2005 because he was not entirely convinced the aye-aye formed a clade with the rest of the Malagasy lemurs.

[27] In 2008, Russell Mittermeier, Colin Groves, and others ignored addressing higher-level taxonomy by defining lemurs as monophyletic and containing five living families, including Daubentoniidae.

[28] Further evidence indicating that the aye-aye belongs in the superfamily Lemuroidea can be inferred from the presence of petrosal bullae encasing the ossicles of the ear.

However, as the aye-ayes begin to reach maturity, their bodies will be completely covered in thick fur and are typically not one solid color.

On the head and back, the ends of the hair are typically tipped with white while the rest of the body will ordinarily be a yellow and/or brown color.

[32] The complex geometry of ridges on the inner surface of aye-aye ears 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.

These ridges can be regarded as the acoustic equivalent of a Fresnel lens, and may be seen in a large variety of unrelated animals, such as lesser galago, bat-eared fox, mouse lemur, and others.

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.

[35][36] Aye-ayes tap on the trunks and branches of trees at a rate of up to eight times per second, and listen to the echo produced to find hollow chambers.

Horizontal movement is more difficult, but the aye-aye rarely descends to jump to another tree, and can often travel up to 4 km (2+1⁄2 mi) a night.

[43] Recent research shows the aye-aye is more widespread than was previously thought, but its conservation status was changed to endangered in 2014.

However, there is no direct evidence to suggest aye-ayes pose any legitimate threat to crops and therefore are killed based on superstition.

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 fingers to puncture their victims' aorta.

[8] The conservation of this species has been aided by captive breeding, primarily at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina.