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Sign up for our mailing list!\xa0We also have merchandise!\n\nThanks to Elaine, Molly, and Oliver for suggesting the aye-aye! I guess it's an idea whose time has finally come.\n\nFurther reading:\n\nGimme six! Researchers discover aye-aye's extra finger\n\nAh yes, I have many many many fingers:\n\n\n\nS p i d e r h a n d s:\n\n \n\nA baby aye-aye (blep):\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nI can safely say that this week\u2019s episode is brought to you by popular demand. It was suggested by not one, not two, but three different listeners, two of them very recently. Elaine wanted to know about the aye-aye, and then Molly wanted to know about the aye-aye, and then Oliver wanted to know about the aye-aye. I think it\u2019s high time we all learned about the aye-aye, because it\u2019s a weird and amazing animal.\n\nThe aye-aye is a primate, specifically a type of lemur, but it doesn\u2019t look like other lemurs. It kind of looks like a weird possum at first glance. Its shaggy fur is brown or yellowish but the hairs are tipped with white, which gives it a frosty appearance. Its face is white or pale gray. Its eyes are large, very round, and orange or yellow, and it has really big ears sort of like a bat\u2019s ears. It grows up to three feet long, or 90 cm, including its really long tail.\n\nTo picture what an aye-aye looks like, imagine a little monkey with brownish fur tipped with white, with a tail longer than its body that\u2019s thickly furred like a squirrel\u2019s tail. Its head looks like a squirrel or possum, but with big orangey staring eyes and big bat ears that are sort of stuck out to the sides of its head instead of on top. Its hind feet look like monkey feet with an opposing digit to help it grab onto branches, because it lives in trees. But its hands look like SPIDERS. The fingers of its hands are extremely long and thin like spider legs. That\u2019s what it looks like.\n\nThe aye aye\u2019s fingers are long for an interesting reason, and if you don\u2019t already know, I bet you would never be able to guess. Go on, guess. Just shout it out. I won\u2019t hear it but everyone around you will hear you shout, \u201cTHE AYE-AYE\u2019S FINGERS LOOK LIKE SPIDER LEGS BECAUSE IT WANTS TO SCARE PREDATORS INTO THINKING IT\u2019S TWO SPIDERS WITH A MONKEY FRIEND.\u201d You would be wrong, sorry, but that\u2019s a good guess.\n\nNo, the aye aye uses its fingers to find grubs and other insects hidden in rotting wood or under bark, just like a woodpecker. Here\u2019s how that works, and you\u2019re not going to believe it, but it\u2019s true. The aye aye is a primate, which means it has five fingers just like monkeys and apes and humans, but again, they\u2019re extremely long and thin. The middle finger is even thinner than the others. It looks like a jointed twig. If it really was a spider, other spiders would ask what happened to that leg because it\u2019s so much thinner than the other legs.\n\nThe aye aye uses the thin finger to tap-tap-tap on tree branches and trunks at night, and it listens with its huge ears to the echoes of its tapping. That\u2019s echolocation, just like bats and a few other animals use to navigate, but the aye aye uses it to listen for hollow places in the tree where insects are hiding. It can also hear the tiny movements of insects. Its ears are just that sensitive.\n\nWhen the aye aye locates an insect, it chews a hole into the wood and then uses its long fingers to fish the insects out. It has claws at the end of its fingers that help it catch the insects, although the claws are actually just claw-like fingernails. Primates don\u2019t have claws, we have nails, and that includes the aye-aye. It doesn\u2019t just eat insects, though. It eats fruit, seeds, various kinds of fungus, honey, flowers, and flower nectar. It actually eats more plant material than insects. It may also eat frogs, since some frogs in Madagascar lay their eggs in small holes in trees that are filled with rainwater, but it\u2019s also possible that the aye-aye doesn\u2019t care about frogs or frog egg...