The ayeaye ( Daubentonia madagascariensis ) is a nocturnal lemur endemic to Madagascar that has an additional pair of "pseudo-thumbs", resulting in twelve fingers on its hands.
They were previously believed to be fleshy protrusions , but further analysis has revealed that they are made up of bone and carylax.
This extra finger on each hand is the finger you use to pierce rotten logs and extract larvae. So the too short-fingered ayeaye had a harder time surviving and reproducing .
In addition, the finger has other frankly striking functions, such as detecting its prey by drumming the trunk with that finger to capture the change in tone that reveals the presence of an insect inside.
The results of the ayeaye study were published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology on October 21, 2019.
And it’s very ugly
This creature lives in Madagascar, and is hunted there mercilessly simply because it looks demonic. The natives of Madagascar, therefore, consider that this animal is possessed by evil spirits and that its very existence is a risk to the world: there is even the extravagant idea that if you point your third finger at a person, they will die suddenly shortly after. – Your middle finger is substantially longer and thinner than the rest, Nosferatu-style .
The ayeaye is a nocturnal animal, it feeds on larvae and its tail is usually longer than the rest of its body; it weighs two to three kilograms and can live up to 23 years.
So ugly and distorted is the ayeaye that the writer Douglas Adams dedicated these nice words to him in Tomorrow they will not be , a travel book with the zoologist Mark Carwardine :
It is a very strange looking creature that could be said to be made up of loose pieces of other animals. It looks a bit like a large cat with bat ears, beaver teeth, a tail resembling a large ostrich feather, a middle finger similar to a long dry branch, and a pair of huge eyes that seem to look at a totally different world stretching out. behind our back …