Aye-aye

Open encyclopedia reference

The aye-aye (, Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger that they can use to catch grubs and larvae out of tree trunks. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate. It is characterized by its unusual method of finding food: It taps on trees and listens for echoes that signal hollows inside them, which are often infested by grubs, then gnaws holes into the wood using its forward-slanting incisors to create a small hole into which it inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out. This foraging method is called percussive foraging, and takes up 5–41% of the aye-aye's foraging time. 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. From an ecological perspective, the aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker, as it is capable of penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within.

Wikipedia contributors, Aye-aye; see linked history · CC BY-SA 4.0 . Plain-text lead excerpt, at most 180 words; no infobox or later sections Retrieved 2026-10-05T01:21:12.605422+00:00. This reference remains separate from the taxonomic record.

Identity & source status

Scientific name

Daubentonia madagascariensis (Gmelin, 1788)

Name authority

(Gmelin, 1788)

Common name

Aye-aye

Rank

species

Accepted status

accepted

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Chordata

Class

Mammalia

Order

Primates

Family

Daubentoniidae

Genus

Daubentonia

Extinction status

Recorded extant

Classification family tree

Nested taxonomic groups from the source. This is not a direct-ancestor chain, a dated evolutionary tree or a phylogenetic reconstruction.

1. domainEukaryota (Chatton, 1925) Whittaker & Margulis, 1978
2. kingdomAnimalia
3. phylumChordata
4. subphylumVertebrata
5. infraphylumGnathostomata
6. parvphylumOsteichthyes
7. megaclassTetrapoda
8. classMammalia Linnaeus, 1758
9. subclassTheria Parker & Haswell, 1897
10. infraclassEutheria Gill, 1872
11. orderPrimates Linnaeus, 1758
12. suborderStrepsirrhini É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1812
13. infraorderChiromyiformes Anthony & Coupin, 1931
14. familyDaubentoniidae Gray, 1863
15. genusDaubentonia É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1795
16. speciesDaubentonia madagascariensis (Gmelin, 1788)

Close classified relatives

No other member of this genus is present in the selected snapshot.

Browse 1 records assigned to Daubentoniidae.

Names & synonyms

Names explicitly linked to this accepted taxon in the source. Synonymy can change with revision.

Documented distribution

Source distribution statements, not a complete range map. A listed locality is not necessarily a place of origin.

Source literature & publication evidence

References attached to this source record, including nomenclatural citations where supplied. This is a selected bibliography; abbreviated citations remain in the source’s form.

1. https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=572886 Source fields: Taxon.tsv dwc:namePublishedIn, Taxon.tsv dcterms:references

Origins, evidence & remaining research

Name authority and publication references document nomenclature where the source supplies it. They do not establish evolutionary origins or the earliest fossil occurrence.

Specimen-level evidence, morphology, ecological research, phylogenetic studies, a comprehensive bibliography and a located literary passage have not yet been compiled for this record. A suitable sourced image remains to be added.

Dataset citation & attribution

This exact taxon in ChecklistBank · Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11

Catalogue of Life 2026-09-11; dataset 316321; doi:10.48580/dgz5n. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Retrieved 5 October 2026.

Stable key: col:34B7X. Classification follows source parent identifiers. English common names may vary by region.