Wondernose

What mammal chews holes in trees and pulls out grubs to eat with its long middle finger?

Sounds similar to a Woodpecker, you say? True, both creatures extract insects from trees and eat them, but this animal is not a Woodpecker, for, Wondernose, birds don’t chew. No, it is a mammal. And it does not only eat grubs, either. This little lemur is an omnivore (meaning it eats animal and vegetable matter), feasting on fruit, nectar, seeds, small animals, and, obviously, grubs. Since they have a taste for cultivated fruits they are sometimes treated as pests. This little creature is nocturnal or a night creature, by the way. He spends all day sleeping in a cozy nest of sticks high in a tree. Now you are really curious, aren’t you? A mammal that chews holes in trees and sleeps all day?

Our mystery primate lives only in Madagascar and a few surrounding islands. It hangs out in forests, both deciduous and tropical. And you haven’t even heard half of the story yet, Wondernose, for I haven’t told you how he looks! He is almost frightening, with his leathery, bat-like ears, extremely long and thin fingers, big, yellow eyes, rodent like face and huge, bushy tail. The third finger is so skinny that it appears to be skin and bone, with no flesh! Their thick coat is anywhere from gray to brown, and has a grizzled look, due to white-tipped guard hairs. Their body is about one foot long, and the tail more than doubles their body length, ranging from 17 to 20 in!

I suppose I should describe in more detail how they go about extracting grubs from trees, Wondernose, as you probably want to know. First, he taps around on the tree with his fingers and listens with his big ears, to see if he can find a cavity in the tree where a grub is hiding. When he is sure he has found one, he bites into the tree with his teeth until there is a hole big enough for his finger to go into. Then he reaches in with his skin-and-bone finger, hooks his nail into the grub, pulls it out and eats it. It’s that easy (for him, I mean). His long fingers with bear-like nails are also used for scraping the meat out of coconuts and other fruits.

Females do not have a specific season when they give birth, and sometimes wait 3 years between babies. When they do decide to have children they only have one at a time. The little one stays in the nest for 2 months before it ventures out to explore the world. Once they grow up they do not live with any other of their kind, as they are solitary creatures.

I have told you a lot about our mystery creature, but most likely you have no idea what it is called, as you may never have heard of him before. His name is supposed to sound like natives of Madagascar in distress. Wondernose, what would you think if a spooky looking creature came and stole some coconuts you were growing? And suppose this largest of all nocturnal primates was considered an ill omen in your tribe. What would you do? You would probably scream “Aye aye!”  And so this mammal was named the Aye-Aye (the name could also have something to do with the fact that sometimes Aye-Ayes make a sound similar to aye aye). And so now you know all I can tell you about the bizarre Aye-Aye. Why don’t you see if your friends can guess what mammal chews holes in trees and looks like a cross between a bat and a rat?


Note: Wondernose is the title of a series of stories in Nature Friend Magazine, and I wrote this article to submit to them, hence all the references to Wondernose.