Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Primates > Daubentoniidae > Daubentonia > Daubentonia madagascariensis

Daubentonia madagascariensis (aye-aye)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate, and 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 which 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 w
View Wikipedia Record: Daubentonia madagascariensis

Endangered Species

Status: Endangered
View IUCN Record: Daubentonia madagascariensis

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
21
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
57
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 41.59
EDGE Score: 4.44
View EDGE Record: Daubentonia madagascariensis

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  5.022 lbs (2.278 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  109 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Nectarivore, Granivore
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  40 %
Diet - Nectar [2]  20 %
Diet - Seeds [2]  40 %
Forages - Arboreal [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  2 years 5 months
Gestation [1]  5 months 17 days
Litter Size [1]  1
Litters / Year [1]  1
Maximum Longevity [1]  23 years
Nocturnal [3]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [4]  17 inches (42 cm)
Weaning [1]  6 months 17 days
Habitat Substrate [3]  Arboreal

Ecoregions

Name Countries Ecozone Biome Species Report Climate Land
Use
Madagascar dry deciduous forests Madagascar Afrotropic Tropical and Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
Madagascar lowland forests Madagascar Afrotropic Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
Madagascar subhumid forests Madagascar Afrotropic Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles Yes

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Competing SpeciesCommon Prey Count
Coracopsis nigra (Lesser Vasa Parrot)1
Otolemur crassicaudatus (greater galago)1
Pteropus niger (greater mascarene flying fox)1

Providers

Shelter 
Intsia bijuga (ifil)[5]
Cocos nucifera (coconut palm)[5]
Litchi chinensis (lychee)[5]
Terminalia catappa (india almond)[5]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Mastophorus muris[6]

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 4Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 5Daubentonia madagascariensis, Aleta Quinn and Don E. Wilson, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 740, pp. 1–6 (2004)
♦ 6Nunn, C. L., and S. Altizer. 2005. The Global Mammal Parasite Database: An Online Resource for Infectious Disease Records in Wild Primates. Evolutionary Anthroplogy 14:1-2.
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0