page_title: Aye-aye
section_title: Folk belief
hierarchical_section_title: Aye-aye / Conservation / Folk belief
caption_attribution_description: English: A dead aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis), killed and hung up by Malagasy in hopes that the evil spirit will be carried away by travelers.
context_page_description: The aye-aye is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger.
  It is the world's largest nocturnal primate. It 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 middle 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, Daubentonia robusta, appears to have become extinct at some point within the last 1000 years.
context_section_description: The aye-aye is often viewed as a harbinger of evil and killed on sight. Others believe, if one points its narrowest finger at someone, they are marked for death. Some say that the appearance of an aye-aye in a village predicts the death of a villager, and the only way to prevent this is to kill it. 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 finger to puncture the victim's aorta.
caption: Aye-ayes are commonly thought to be bad omens by some of the Malagasy people, although other legends consider them a good omen. When spotted, they are killed on sight and hung up so that the evil spirit will be carried away by travelers.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.", "Image Model": "E-3", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:11:13 23:30:55", "Image ExifOffset": "244", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "942", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8191", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:03:27 16:47:50", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:03:27 16:47:50", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "415241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-7/10", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "761/256", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "51", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2736", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3648", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "102", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Hard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "D70501665", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[12, 60, 14/5, 4]", "EXIF LensModel": "12.0-60.0 mm f/2.8-4.0", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "230003695"}