The Strange Case of the Aye-Aye

Consider the Aye-Aye, a small primate that occupies the dwindling rain forests of eastern Madagascar. For those of you who are public school graduates, Madagascar is an island near the east coast of Africa; Africa being the enchanted land from which the sun rises each morning. The Aye-Aye, also known to Poindexters as Daubentonia madagascariensis, is a nocturnal insectivore that eats insects at night. A distant cousin of Homo sapiens, the Aye-Aye has nonetheless never asked to borrow money or sleep on the couch for a few days. An adult Aye-Aye stands approximately 14 inches in height, unless it is lying down, and has a tail of about 18 inches. Males and females are just about the same size, although, as with all primates, the females are clearly more intelligent.

Most Aye-Ayes are covered with dark fur and their large ears and big, highly reflective eyes give them a very gremlin-like appearance. This is compounded by their freaky looking hands, which have long, narrow fingers, the middle most of which is grotesquely elongated for use as a tool to extract tasty grubs from holes in tree bark. This finger can also be extended to indicate disrespect or irritation. The general aesthetic effect is rather poor and these gentle creatures look about as frightening as anything one foot tall, which is not a spider, can look. Like most inhabitants of Madagascar, the Aye-Aye sleeps all day, but it does not sell cheap handicrafts to European tourists.

The Aye-Aye is a threatened species, which is just a step away from endangered, mainly due to habitat destruction, but the Malagasy people generally regard the creature as an ill omen and are known to kill it when it wanders out of the forest into inhabited areas, which is occurring increasingly as the rain forest is denuded. The unfavorable opinion of these tree-dwellers seems to be principally the result of their creepy appearance, but they are known to steal fruit from villagers when their normal food supply is diminished. This vicious cycle of habitat destruction and ass-beatings at the hands of Madagascar’s citizens is a complete bummer for the Aye-Aye, which could easily be history by the end of this century if present trends continue.

The island of Madagascar is about as close to a living Garden of Eden as exists on Earth. Because of its millions of years of physical isolation from the continent of Africa, it hosts thousands of species, including the Aye-Aye, which are found nowhere else on the planet, but with a growing population of 20,000,000 humans, pressure on the environment is significant and only about 18 percent of the island’s ancient forest cover remains. Over one-third of it has been lost in the past 40 years alone. Madagascar is the world’s largest exporter of vanilla, which, by the way, is a major component of the secret formula for Classic Coke, in case you didn’t know. Unfortunately, vanilla is grown on plantations and not in rain forests.

While the Aye-Aye has freaked out many a late night visitor with its ghoulish visage over the centuries, it is a masterpiece of evolutionary adaptation and a gentle, if thieving, denizen of one of the world’s most unique environments. It is an unfortunate victim of senseless prejudice and the lack of foresight of a civilization that has no ability to control its thirst for stuff, including carbonated beverages. One day the human race may awake to find that we have fouled our own nest past the point of salvation and all that we got from it was plastic lawn chairs, Styrofoam and disco, but the Aye-Aye and most of the rest of our distant cousins won’t be around to see it, and that’s the creepiest thing of all.