Creepy, Cool, and Critically Endangered — The Aye-Aye Story

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Over 7 million different animals inhabit our planet. Now, the IIs is, like we said, in Madagascar. The range is more the eastern side, obviously in a forest habitat. What can they teach us? What's so incredible about this finger on the II is there is a ball and socket joint that allows it to rotate almost 360 degrees. Many species are in crisis and need your help. Join the movement at allcreaturespod.com Welcome to the All Creatures Podcast, this is Chris.

And I'm Angie. This is the perfect animal. Goblin Shark was perfect for the month. But the aye-aye next up for Spooky October. I'm staring at it in the face. Wow. Wow. The I.I. is a fascinating creature. A night spirit is actually what the word lemur means in Latin. So covering. a family member of the night spirits. And they're the world's largest nocturnal primates. So they would be out during spooky October in the evening and they are just...

bizarre in so many different ways. IA's have special teeth, special fingers, cool feeding behaviors, kind of like a woodpecker. I mean, and then they... And then their looks, too. They just look at them. I mean, they're called the world's weirdest primate. And there's definitely truth in that. And Chris, that face, that face of the aye-aye, it looks a little gremlin-like, and it might be the face that only a mother and Angie.

Can love. You can love them. You can love them. Yeah. We're going to describe them in a minute here. They're just, they're fascinating. They're fascinating creatures of Madagascar. So always love going back there. And I'd like to dedicate this episode to a special friend, to Jen, who is my brother Joe's partner back in the United States. She has a little dog named Cupcake that looks like an aye-aye to me.

I just opened up the picture you sent me. She is so special. She is something. I mean, yeah, like a fuzzy white little gremlin. So cute. Oh, with her bowed legs. Oh, my goodness. Oh, Cupcake, I love you and I don't even know you. So shout out to Little Cupcake, who is the aye-aye of dogs. And to Jen, the mother that loves Little Cupcake.

Jen loves the podcast. Beautiful inside and out. I'm sure Cupcake is. But I also want to give a thanks to our Patreon supporters. They have all voted on next week's species. So we will dedicate that one to them. It will be a good one. to end the month of spooky October. And we're actually going to be sending money to the orangutan project. So I'm excited about that. I'm actually going to send some extra money to them because listening to leaf and all the work he's doing.

I just, oh, you know, I'm going to give a little bonus money this month to him. So thank you for that. But again, you know, on Patreon, you're supporting us. You're supporting conservation. It helps Angie and I pay the bills and keep us doing this week in, week out. We've got some fascinating interviews lined up that are coming and just stay tuned for that. So thank you.

And Chris, I have to give a huge shout out to feed spot because we ranked in their top animal podcasts. So feed spot is a group that. goes through and listens to and rates and reviews and tells you everything you want to know about all the different podcasts out there that you have interest in. And if you search animals, we are in the top.

top 10 spot, which is such great news for this podcast. It means a people are listening, but B, hopefully we're starting to circulate a little bit more besides just friends and family and word of mouth. So we're very grassroots. Chris and I don't. do anything. We just record once a week and cross our fingers and hope for the best. But yeah, so for Feedspot to say, hey, they're pretty good, made my day.

Yeah, I know. I like it. I love looking at our statistics and I always love to see downloads in Uganda and Kenya and Tanzania. I wonder if there's any in Madagascar. We'll have to try to make sure there are after this week. Yeah, I haven't seen any Madagascar, but we have a very good following in Europe, Sweden, Germany. Shout out to all of our friends in Europe and then obviously Pips Neck the Woods in the UK.

And especially down here in Australia. So thank you so much, wherever you are in the world, listening and learning and sharing. It just means the world to us because we are really... Doing our best to educate you on these animals and the plight that they're in, especially the aye-aye. I was going to say, speaking of the aye-aye, yeah, endangered. Yeah, they are in deep, deep trouble.

It's fun to talk about a spooky looking species and for people that are just listening and can't really look at a picture. And I'm going to date myself a little bit. But to me, when I first saw it, the first thought I had was. the werewolf in the movie an american werewolf of london which was like one of the freakiest werewolves i've ever seen in a movie it's an 80s movie but how how do you describe this this

This animal. Well, Chris, there's a lot of different ways to describe it. Some say that it has a cat face and a squirrel-like body, but then... primate features as well. So something gets cute, something gets ugly. I tend to be drawn first and foremost to their really bushy tail. I love, love bushy tails. And this is a long bushy tail that's longer than their body.

If you start at their face, the II is a primate, right? And so their face is a little bit lighter color, white grayish, sometimes light brown, as compared to the rest of their body, which is usually black. or dark brown in color. So they're typically a black to dark brown creature with this lighter face. Their hair is pretty good length and coarse. And like I said, there's that bushy tail.

And then the tips of the hair and the adult eye-eye take on a white or silver appearance. And so, I mean, to me, their coat is just really beautiful with these scattered white. guard hairs against the dark black color of their body and within their face, which is once again, like lighter gray or creamish color. They have these beautiful yellow-orange eyes. And their eyes are big because they're a nocturnal animal, which we'll talk about. And they have dark markings kind of just.

subtly around their eyes and then a short pronounced snout with a cute little pink nose and their ears. Now, Chris, the high eyes ears is something special. in and amongst herself because they are big. Some say they're triangular. I think they're more egg-like, the top of an egg, like narrow and oval, but very big and they don't have any fur on them. And we'll talk about that when we get to the hearing section in physiology. So I mean, I probably didn't do him justice.

Because when you say cute, I'm laughing. I'm laughing. Oh, cute. Like kind of maybe like a. Like a hairless chihuahua or a pug or, you know, just dogs that are, some say they're cute and some say only a mother can love them. Cupcake. No, I'm sorry, Jen. Sorry, Jen. We all love cupcake. But I mean, honestly, and then we'll talk about their hands independently, their hands and their feet, because they're just so unique. But yes, they're...

Hale is just super bushy. And that's, of course, a lemur trait. And I just love them. Out of all the prosimians, which include the bush babies and the lorries and the lemurs and the tarsiers, the aye-aye's tail is the bushiest. The hairs are actually the longest on the tail. So they win the tail award, and then it's also very, very long as well.

Oh yeah. It's like, yeah, up to 24 inches or two feet, 60 centimeters, just the tail. Now their body length is, yeah, I see anywhere from 14 to 17 inches or up to 40 centimeters. And they weigh only about four pounds or two kilograms. So again, that lemur size that we come to expect in the family. And yeah, Chris, although they're small when you think of a primate. They are the largest nocturnal primates because there's other nocturnal primates, but these guys are actually the largest.

I think a lot of it's in the tail. The tail and the ears. Yeah, the ears. But I mean, think about it. All the primates down in South America, there's quite a bit. So in the new world and then in these old world ones. Now, the II is, like we said, in Madagascar. The range is more the eastern side. Obviously, in a forest habitat, I mean, they find them in the deciduous forests. They find them in plantations.

some of these mangrove forests or the dry scrub forests so you you find them in all different types of environments but obviously with trees because as you're going to find out especially we get to behavior that's where they spend their life is is up in the canopy right Right. Yeah. Very, very arboreal. Now, Angie, you know, why care? Not just because they are so unique looking and they are endangered.

But they do – all these animals in Madagascar are contributing to the health and biome there, right? Oh, yeah. The aye-aye is – critical for Madagascar's ecosystem. So they're omnivores, and we're going to talk a lot about their nutrition behaviors because they're just incredible the way they forage. they eat a lot of fruit as well. And so the II is really important as a seed disperser. And once again, with some of the unique foraging behaviors, they participate in something called percussive.

foraging, which is very similar to a woodpecker. And so the II is like the woodpecker in Madagascar. So they fill that niche of helping remove insects and larvae from trees to help the trees survive. And they also make holes with their teeth, which I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

And then those holes can be used by other creatures. And they, well, they're nest builders too. And sometimes their nests can be used by not only other IIs, but other animals as well. And so the II is just such an important. animal in the Madagascar forest on many different levels of the food web, especially being an omnivore. Yeah, they feel such a unique niche.

Compared to a lot of the other species. And the II, Chris, is also something to be really, really celebrated, in my opinion. Obviously, their looks, their physiology, all that. But the II was thought to be extinct back in 1933. And it was rediscovered in 1957. But since then, their numbers are really low, estimated between maybe a thousand. Maybe 10,000, but probably not with all the deforestation and other habitat loss and or poaching or killing of IIs in Madagascar.

I know we're doing spooky October. And actually, that's why this podcast is so fascinating to me, because I learn and grow so much, of course, as an animal enthusiast and researchers, scientists, and behaviorists, of course. But Chris's podcast also teaches me a lot about other cultures and just being more reflective with even some of. our own, my own stereotypes or poking fun because we did want to cover the aye-aye because it's this kind of spooky looking creature. But in all reality,

I don't want to portray it like that at all in the podcast because in Madagascar, the II has a really, really bad reputation. In fact, it's killed a lot because the II in Madagascar. is thought to be an omen or a demon or a spirit of bad luck or evil. And a lot of people will kill them even just when they see them. And then there's also a myth out there.

or superstition, whatever you want to call it in Madagascar, that if an eye-eye points its middle finger at you, which we'll talk a lot about their specialized hands and fingers when we get to physiology. But if it points his finger at you, that means you're marked for death. And so they'll kill it a lot of times. I just, I mean, obviously that's not true. There's several IIs house under human care by wonderful zookeepers that are, of course.

not dying when the ii points the middle finger at them or whatever and it's not even pointing at them it's probably just like accidentally they've really big long middle fingers and so i don't know so that's where it's like I don't know if I want to portray them as like this spooky or anything to do with evil or bad luck or dark or whatever, because.

Because depending on where you're listening from, if it is downloaded from Madagascar with a title of like the spooky I.I. or something, I don't want that to be the headline, right? I don't want it to be like. like a clickbait type thing. So anyways, this is my push for the title to be something very, very boring. Like I eyes are cool or I eyes are.

are misunderstood or something. Uh, our eyes are endangered. Uh, just because I mean, because we are international, I was not educated in this, especially, um, since, because I'm not a primatologist and. I didn't work with a ton of primates in my career, pretty much just golden lion tamarins. So yeah, just something to be considerate about and be thinking about. And if anybody ever tells you that the II is an omen for bad luck or.

Something like that is definitely not, and it should not be killed. And I know it's probably a cultural thing in Madagascar. I don't want to come off as a Westerner being like, this belief is wrong or something.

But they are endangered and they're in trouble because of habitat destruction. And I don't want them to be in more trouble because they have a bad reputation. And I definitely don't want All Creatures podcast to... encourage that bad reputation so they're cute they're beautiful and they will bring you good luck no and it so this week you're reading about that but

about how they are persecuted really and and they are heading straight towards extinction it's really sad so anytime we go to madagascar i'm always curious to see how they're doing and and one thing that's been you know on our minds in the past year is how conservation is doing during this covid pandemic you know here we are in october 2021 this pandemic's been going on for 19 20.

months two years for some places almost and it's really impacted conservation and we know that so i wanted to check in on madagascar and just kind of see how they were doing in the past year And there's some good news mixed in here. It just always is like, oh, Debbie Downer. But here's the reality on the ground there. Now, with COVID, Madagascar seems to be doing okay.

actually, you know, compared to a lot of places in the world. As of October 2021, there was only close to 44,000 confirmed cases of COVID with just under a thousand deaths in Madagascar. which is great, still sad numbers, but great compared to a lot of other nations around the world that have greatly suffered.

through the COVID pandemic. So Madagascar seems to be doing okay. They are vaccinating their population. Close to almost half a million people have been vaccinated out of the 28 million that live there. So obviously still a lot more work to do getting vaccines to these other nations around the world. What Madagascar got hit with, Angie, was this year is they got hit with a massive, devastating drought. In the rainforest?

Yeah, I'm going to get to some of the climate change scientists, but they just got just devastated this year with a really horrific drought that led to insect. infestation sandstorms they lost 60 of their crops and is leaving you know close to over a million people severely impoverished with severe food insecurity

So they have thousands and thousands of people and adults and children who are suffering from malnutrition there. Now, with that real quick, researchers, which is interesting about this famine. is this is the only famine ever documented on earth so far that has been directly attributed to climate change and nothing else. There has not been any other contributing factors.

Normally with famines, there's other factors, political instability, civil wars, man-made causes of over farming, things like that, that can lead to famine. So there's many causes of a famine. This one researchers are saying is the very first one that they can say climate change absolutely caused this famine. And they said, sadly, Madagascar contributes very little.

to carbon in the environment. And they are the first country to face a modern famine because of it. So what's going on there in Madagascar? And obviously, this is going to affect the II. and the lemurs and the fossa and all the unique gosh we've been back to chameleon i remember we covered it talked about like this the world's smallest chameleon i believe lives there if i remember right there's so many unique species there

And obviously this is affected because the rainfall patterns in Madagascar in the last decade have become completely unpredictable. They're all over the map. And it's, you know, they're saying the fields are bare, the seeds aren't sprouting, they are in desperate trouble. Then you combine that with COVID and not so much.

The population hasn't been hit as hard compared to other places, but there's no tourists coming in. And a lot of these places in Madagascar... really rely on tourist dollars to help support and prop up their economy so they're getting really hammered this year really a lot of a lot of challenges on top of already challenges that they faced. Well, Chris, that's where coming from, like the Western point of view, it's where I'm often just like, oh, just stop the habitat.

urbanization habitat destruction type deal but that's easy for me to say over here when well we do it in florida as well um and It's over there and they're experiencing all these hardships you just mentioned. I mean, they need money to survive and the rainforest provide a lot of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. I mean, some of the data, 75% of the people in Madagascar live on less than $1.90 US per day. Wow. So they're surviving on-

That's crazy. I can't imagine. So there is a lot of poverty widespread in Madagascar. And so that leads to, you know, hunting and over-collection of animals.

you know, bushmeat trade and things like that for them to survive. So they're faced with a lot, a lot of challenges. And this is what conservationists know. They know these challenges and they were addressing them because Madagascar is... is really an ecological hotspot in the world. So the good news is there's over 500 conservation projects ongoing in Madagascar. So with all these projects, I mean, they...

They provide employment opportunities. They engage the local communities with this focus. And it's really helped Madagascar turn some of this around. But because of COVID, this is probably similar very much around the world with a lot of conservation projects in the works. I know when we talked about Sumatran rhino, a lot of stuff still on hold there. in Indonesia is it's gotten way more expensive for these NGOs to operate. And a lot of them.

are from out of the country and they can't get in country to run their projects. So it's really hampered a lot of conservation efforts. So there was a report, especially specifically focused in on Madagascar and conservation. And the authors did bring up a lot of their challenges, you know, just. costs of operating from a distance have gone through the roof for them. And they just said it's having a major impact.

You know, coupled with the fact that you don't have tourists coming in where a lot of that money is used and reinvested in conservation activities. People have lost their jobs. working with conservation so now they're faced with starvation and now you have this famine everything's hitting at once so scientists don't know the impact yet on what that's had on on madagascar's wildlife but if i was a betting person i would say it it has hurt quite a bit and it could it could be hurting the

the II. Now, the good news is conservation groups are aware of this and what they're pushing, and this is what excited me about it. is more locally based conservation activities that are resilient to this type of stuff and benefit, provide benefits and engage local communities. My mind went. straight to all of our whitley award winners that we interviewed of course yes oh like paul dr paula and uh kenny and and all of them around the world that The main theme was empowering locals.

to protect and preserve their native wildlife so like you've said earlier it's kind of funny how you were mentioned that earlier as a westerner coming in saying don't do this don't do that don't do this what covid is showing us and actually advancing and pushing is we need more locally based conservation. We need locals to take care.

of their backyards, right? And we need to empower them. Now they need money. That's got to come from external sources, international sources. We understand that. But if we can take those funds. and then invest it in the locals, empower them, then that would be resilient to things like COVID and whatnot. So...

For me, that's a lot of hope, even though the things in Madagascar this year are horrific. They're really bad. That's just the bottom line from the reports I'm reading and the opinions I'm reading of conservationists. It's going to force us and hopefully force the conservation community to. empower locals more like like those if you haven't listened to the whitley award winners please go listen to some of them those interviews they are such heroes and they give me a lot of hope for the future so

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Switching gears to evolution, primates are always fascinating because that's where we all started. Well, and especially these ancient primates too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really ancient, really ancient.

You know, I did read something, though, about a criticism on us calling lemurs and the persimians, like, really, this is what it looked like 60 million years ago. And they were like, no. these guys have evolved yeah they're ancient ancient lineage but they have evolved over 60 million years like the ii with some insane adaptations which we're going to get to here in a second all right

Real quick, class mammals, 5,500 species. Order, primates, over 600 species. The suborder, again, we did this with bush babies. Strepsi rohini, so that is about 114 species of lemurs, the podos, the lorises, the bush babies, or the goligos. All, you know, the lemurs, right? And I've said that all of those are streptocerini in the suborder. All other primates are monkeys, are apes, us.

Our suborder is haplorhinny. So that's how they divided it out. Now, what's interesting about the II is it's the only species left in the family Dobentinidae. It's a big word that is left. The giant II, which I would have loved to seen, was the other recent... part of this family and it went extinct about a thousand years ago, which I'll talk about. Right. Yeah. I was reading about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there was one that was about twice as big as today's.

Now, the genus is Dobintonia, and the species name is Dobintonia madagascarinius. Yeah. I love those scientific names. Okay. Just skip them. I just don't even mess with them these days. All right. The giant II was about five times, they say two to five times as large as today's II. So it could be anywhere from like 20 pounds, two to three feet, probably in body size.

They have only found a few fossils, not a ton of them, but they have found fossils that have shown that it lived and that it went extinct about a thousand years ago. Interestingly. Humans really didn't settle Madagascar until about 1500 years ago. I did read a paper because I get so dorky in this stuff. I just love the history.

They have found some human settlements that might date back 11,000 years ago, but nothing – it's contentious data. It's being debated. They think maybe they were just explorers that lived there but left. Really, humans did not settle and really start to dominate the environment in Madagascar until about 1500 years ago. Then about a thousand years ago, when...

We see the giant aye-aye go extinct. Where we see the elephant bird go extinct is when Madagascar started becoming a major trade hub in the Indian Ocean. So people started coming to Madagascar, leaving Madagascar, and you see some of these species start to go extinct. So that's what happened to the poor giant I.I., and we really, really don't want that to happen.

No, because that really wasn't that long ago. No, it's not. It always makes me think of New Zealand. Humans weren't here until about 500 years ago. So when the Europeans. They have left their mark. Yeah. So when the Europeans started exploring to the new world, you know, the Americas. The Polynesians made it down here to New Zealand. They landed and they drove our giant bird, the moa, extinct, the host eagle, extinct, and a lot of other species.

humans definitely have have impacted everywhere we've gone but okay jumping back into this really quick primate evolution we've covered a lot i'm seeing data anywhere from the earliest permissions 55 65 million years ago that is about when we we split out from that other group or when they split out from that other group We have covered this before. Lemurs rafted over from Africa about 47 to 50 million years ago. And remember, we go back. It wasn't the fossa.

didn't land there until about 20 million years ago. So I always laugh that the lemurs had it so good for so many millions of years with not many predators. But where the eye fits in all that, Angie. Interestingly, it is heavily debated. Some have proposed that the aye-aye actually came over earlier or at a different time than the lemurs on this raft of vegetation. Floating across. Yeah, to Madagascar. Because the AII is, how do you even put this? It is wacky. It is so different.

Yeah, Chris, I read that it's basically eluded proper classification since it was discovered because of all their weird physiological features, their teeth, which we'll talk about, their toes.

All of it. The teeth is one of them. So I wanted to jump in here with the teeth because it has such an impact on where they place them. So the II has incisors that constantly grow. which we don't see in other classes except rodents. And rodents constantly chew. It's like, just think of a beaver. Squirrels do this too. They constantly chew to grind down those teeth. So they at first placed eye eyes in rodentia, thinking they were a type of rodent, like a squirrel.

Because it looked like a squirrel too, right? That bushy tail. Yeah. But then they said, well, it looks more like something that's like a cat. It's cat-like. So it's a feline. there was this huge debate for in the late 1800s, early 1900s on where exactly the II fit. Now, I will tell you today with DNA, II clearly... belongs in primates. And they say it's the most basic form of lemur we have on the planet. So probably somewhat resembles of what was around millions and millions of years ago.

before say lemurs took off and evolved into the ringtails and the black and white ruff and all the beautiful lemurs that we have today So they clearly are primates, but those teeth, Angie, crazy. So incredible and very unique, to say the least. But they need those teeth for their foraging behavior, which we'll talk about when we get to nutrition.

Which makes me wonder if these teeth radiated to keep growing as a form of convergent evolution, similar to rodents in North and South America, or I guess across the globe. I don't know. But clearly, clearly the specialists and the taxonomists don't know either. Right. Yeah. Well, all right. Just just some facts, because I to tie all this in together. their physiology. So you have these teeth that are important for, for foraging and, and, and hunting, right? Really quick. The I eyes, I saw.

this number kind of all over the place but on on average lives maybe 10 years in the wild under human care they've lived 22 23 years with their again wacky weird different physiology are those hands so can we tie in all of you've got these teeth that constantly grow and now you have Some of the strangest looking primate hands you will ever see. Yeah, they're very unusual, but they're unusual with a function. They're very, very specialized. And one of the features on there.

toes or their fingers that iis have that's not super unique to primates, but they have this specialized grooming claw. It's also called a toilet claw, which that was a new term to me. I always just thought it was a grooming claw. But this toilet claw or grooming claw. is a specialized nail that can be found on several species of primates that's used for personal grooming. And when we talk about primates, we talk a lot about aloe grooming, where one primate will groom the other.

This toilet claw or grooming claw on the aye-aye is more used for self-grooming. as they're not a super social primate, which we'll talk about when we get to behavior. But it is really unique in the claw. It's somewhere, it's like a hybrid between a claw and just a thickened nail. And when you zoom in on it, it looks really unique and then different than the other nails on these fingers. And so, Chris, I have to say that. The long middle finger, the skinny skeletal looking middle finger.

of the II is probably the spookiest thing on their bodies, in my opinion, because it almost, compared to the other digits on the hand, which technically the fourth, the ring finger, if you're comparing it to human anatomy, is longer. But the third, the middle finger, is just elongated in general, but very slender and looks like a skeletor hand.

It does. It does. But what's so incredible about this finger on the II is there is a ball and socket joint, which is called the metacarpal phalangeal ball and socket joint in the metacarpals. of the middle finger that allows it to rotate almost 360 degrees. And so... If you think of a ball and socket joint humans, that's like our shoulder, right? So not all the fingers can do this. And I can't think of another, definitely not another primate, if not another mammal that has.

this ball and socket joint in their digits in their, in their hands anywhere. And it's just this one finger and it's basically used to help scoop out. insects from holes that they will chew into trees. And we're going to talk a lot about that when we get to nutrition. And it's just an incredible... physiological adaptation. And when you were talking about evolution and how researchers are thinking that

Oh, perhaps I didn't come across into Madagascar the same time that the lemurs did that it may have came earlier. And then, of course, they might be in. more ancient, there might come from a more ancient lineage of primates, but they are ever evolving. And I have to wonder if the teeth that continually grow and or this...

bizarre. Like I can definitely say, but maybe not. And I don't think it's like scary necessarily, but this bizarre finger that is a little spooky because it's so skinny that can rotate 300 at the, at the knuckle. for lack of better terms, can rotate 360 degrees is just breathtaking. It's fascinating. It does. That's what I love, again, love about this podcast is the way we've laid it out.

The last four years is when we do talk about evolution. That's why I think evolution is important to talk about. Because you imagine this creature, this primate, this distant relative of ours. evolves teeth that continually grow because they use it to chew on wood, to chew holes, right?

So they need that because if their teeth didn't grow, they would eventually wear them down to nubs and starve to death and die. That's what we see with a lot of animals, elephants. That's what kills a lot of elephants. They can't chew their food anymore. But their teeth keep growing. So with this primate, you have these growing teeth, this bizarre, bizarre middle finger. And then...

They have these huge ears. They've evolved these huge ears to echolocate. Like a bat. Yes. Yes. This is the first time we're mentioning it, probably the 30 minutes we've been on air right now or whatever. But yes, they are the only known primate to use echolocation. It's just, I just kept getting, my mind just kept getting blown this week. It was just like, wow. The IA is the only primate to use echolocation to help find its prey.

And when we talk about form and function, they have evolved these large, naked, so no hair on them for the most part, sensitive ears to help enhance their hearing. And the ears are lined with like a series of complex ridges to help focus the sound when they are doing this behavior called percussive forging, which. is where they tap that middle finger, that long skeletal middle finger. They tap, tap, tap, tap, tap on the tree, on wood, up to eight times per second.

And then the AI uses sound signals or echolocation to find areas or cavities within the tree and or vibrations or movements of grubs, so insect larvae. When they tap, tap, tap, it disturbs them, and the grubs move around, and those sound signals, I'm not doing this justice, but the sound signals come back to the eye-eye. as sound waves and they can feel them and basically detect, okay, this is where I want to now use my gnarly rodent-like teeth to bore in deep into a tree.

to find food. And then once the eye bores a hole or digs a hole with its teeth into the tree, it then uses that long middle finger like a... a scooper, like a spoon, because it can rotate 360 degrees to just spoon those grubs up and plop them in their mouth. And you brushed over it.

But eight times per second. I'm sitting here trying to tap my finger as fast as I can in a second. We're such dorks. I tried the same thing. I was like, I got my timer on. I'm like, no. Because percussion, I play several instruments. very, very amateur as a hobby, piano when I was a little kid. And then in middle school, I chose to play percussion.

And I actually got to do like the snare drum on the marching band in high school and stuff. And then I fell in love with guitar in college because you can actually like carry it around and it's much easier to move than pianos or drum sets, right? Yes, yes, yes. But anyway, so I was trying to tap, tap, tap, and no, I couldn't do it either. And so they have some speed muscles in their fingers as well that clearly we don't have. Some fast twitch muscles, right?

And those skinny little fingers, which is just kind of funny to visualize. Yeah. And then, and then they get some information from the sound waves that are produced from either a cavity. Like if you think of tapping on, you know, we tap on different surfaces, it makes different sounds if it's hollow or not.

hollow. And then I suppose it's going to make definitely different sounds and or be able to feel the vibrations and the movements of the insect larvae as they're... saying, Oh no. I read a funny meme that was like these poor larva, like every time they hear something tap on it, they're probably like, Oh no.

I know. It's like their spooky Halloween. They're like, oh, no, here it comes. Run. Not that larvae can talk. I'm a scientist. I do understand that. Or run. Or run. Fair enough. Fair enough. But, yeah, I like to – visualize things and just that tap tap tapping reminded me of the black footed ferret but there you go i was gonna ask you who else taps their food yes uh they're tapping the the poor uh

Prairie dogs at nighttime. This is going way back early, early days of the podcast. And we, we had the, yeah, the black footed ferret would go sneak into the burrows at night. tap on the shoulder of the prairie dog to roll over so then they could go and grab it by the neck. So we had a fun time talking about that. Yeah, but they're not tapping like eight times a second, right? Those poor prairie dogs.

But poor prairie dogs. But yes, I mean, and then I'm so glad that we dorked out about this feeding method, which is called percussive foraging. And that was a new word to me, which. I guess shame on me. It shouldn't have been because it's also a term to describe how a woodpecker forages. Because the woodpecker here in North America, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

And it's doing something similar. Now they're tapping at a crazy rate as well. But they are, of course, drilling holes into trees to look for. insects as well. Um, so yeah, this progressive foraging really had me out and tapping my table with my short stubby fingers and no, you, yeah, you, you definitely can't do it. But, uh,

It's just so fascinating. And I was actually watching some videos on YouTube, which we can put on our show notes from the I.I. Foraging. It must have been caught on a nocturnal. night camera because they are nocturnal. And I was reading that they'll spend between five and up to 40% of their nighttime doing this percussive foraging, basically tap, tap, tapping.

listening, feeling for whether or not there's insects in a cavity and then gnawing, biting into the wood, gnaw, gnaw, gnawing to make holes to then catch its prey with that skeletal or middle finger. Amazing. It is. This podcast is amazing. I know. Just when I think that my mind can't be blown anymore or, oh, there's –

what am I going to dork out about this week? It's always a surprise because percussive forging and the finger anatomy was definitely some of it. And just for our listeners out there, a funny side note is Chris and I just took before this section probably a... 20-minute break dorking out about this scientific paper that we found in the Journal of Experimental Biology all about... the hand and foot biomechanics of the ii and why it does what it does and how it does it and

Anyways, we're dorks, so you're welcome. We are. We do the hard work so we can break it down and talk about it. Just some other things they eat, Angie, before we jump into other behaviors. Obviously, insect larva, like we talked about.

And you did mention seeds and fruits that they eat, fungi. So they are omnivores, you know, like us, the primates with that. And then... Predators for them obviously are birds of prey in Madagascar. The fossa, amazing. Oh God, the fossa was so fun to... That was another fun one that surprised me. Madagascar is just full of treasures. They are. They are. And then humans, obviously, are a big threat to them. But what are some of these other nocturnal behaviors? I mean, the hunting was...

phenomenal, like just so unique, so unique. But what are some of these other things they do? Well, they are nocturnal and so they're busy at nighttime and they have great locomotor abilities because they're always in the trees for most of their life. Arboreal creature that can leap, jump, run, descend headfirst into trees and areas and reach speeds up.

to 20 miles per hour or 32 kilometers. So that was really fascinating to me. I don't know why. I guess I kind of figured they'd be slow because they're nocturnal, but they can move and then they have great, great... tree gymnastics that they can do to stay up in the canopy and just hunt around. And on an average night, the II can travel over four kilometers.

in the canopy foraging around looking for insects, fruit, and other fun things to eat. So they're very, very busy. And when they're not busy hunting or foraging at night, They are often found constructing this nest up in the tree taps, often in like a fork of a tree branch. The nest takes up to 24 hours to build. And it's basically like an elaborate ball of branches and leaves. And then during the day.

because that's when they rest, you can typically find an aye-aye all curled up in the nest, like a little ball, just resting and relaxing and sleeping, of course, because... Well, they're nocturnal and they're tired from jumping around and foraging all night long. And I thought it was cute, Chris, like the nest is for the individual. But once in a while, they'll like switch nests where.

somebody might sleep in their nest. Uh, and so they'll make another one and, or they will once in a while share nests on occasion, but it's really rare because in general, the I I. is mostly solitary. So they will sometimes be found hanging out with other IIs during the breeding season or when they're, when they're courting another II. And then In the evening, depending on the season, they can be found foraging in parties of two to three individuals.

They're not what we think of as a social primate when we think of tamarins and just all the other social, most other primates that are super social. And I, I do have pretty distinct. territories. A female is going to have a little bit smaller territory than a male and hers will typically overlap several males. And the male II, he's, you know, he's... he's not that aggressive. He's somewhat friendly in that he will tolerate sharing some of his territory with other males.

And if he bumps into another male's nest and it's unoccupied, he might happen to fall asleep in there, even though it's not his. So they're pretty, they're not, you wouldn't. It'd be rare to see IIs fighting over territory, but they make their territory really well known by... using scent markings from scent glands on their bums, on their necks, on their cheeks, and then also they utilize some urine scent marking behavior to help tell the other IIs, hey, this is my area.

And in typical primate fashion, they do have several vocalizations. And it might be a little bit of a spooky October because they will do a scream to indicate aggression, which anybody who's ever watched a horror movie knows that that scream is pretty. Typical of what us primates do. Or if you're watching the horror movie and you're screaming at them, don't go down in the basement. Don't go down in the basement. Why would you go down in the basement?

Yeah, but they also have, this is a funny one, they also have a scream variation where they close their mouth. And it's more muffled, of course. And this is reminding me of my children sometimes because this muffled mouth closed scream is more of a protest. So but they'll whimper when they're during competition. And sometimes eyes have been known to make a tss tss sound when seeing a human.

And if they're fleeing a situation, an I will make like a vocalization. So they're pretty noisy creatures when they're under stress. in general they're you're probably not going to hear them make Social calls the way that like a gibbon will do, right? Some of our favorites. You know, you're a lovely animal dork when you and your kids make gibbon calls to each other. It's so sweet. My sons did that the other day and I was like.

Oh, I love them so much. And then of course I made a given call back. Or the tiger chuff. He always did that one. Oh, that's a fun one too. I know. So you said, you know, they meet up, meet up to reproduce. What do we know about reproduction in them? Well, Chris, a lot of what we know is from studying them under human care. And when they are under human care, there doesn't seem to be much seasonality to the females' estrus cycle, as offspring can be born year-round.

But in the wild, it's thought that the breeding season is long and it makes an over a five-month period from October to February. A lot of individuals have... been reported mating during that time. And there were a lot of visible signs of estrus in the female. And what we know so far about the female's estrus cycle is it can last anywhere from 21 to 65 days.

So there's still definitely work to be done regarding II reproduction and what we know about it, but they are not monogamous. So it's not uncommon for a female to breed with different males. in different seasons or maybe even a couple different males in one season. And Chris, what I found fun about the II's courtship behavior is... With the IIs, it's not necessarily the males that are doing all these things to impress the female. But instead, it's not uncommon for females to...

kind of go after or strut their stuff or challenge other females to score a male. Yeah. So I thought that, yeah. Pretty different. Yes. I mean, I'm not going to mention names since the podcast and maybe my kids will listen someday, but there was a female that I had to challenge a little bit to scourge on, which of course I'm very competitive. So that just.

made me like want to hang out with him even more. So, you know, it's, uh, I'm a primate too. What can I say? But once male and females pair up, they'll.

probably interact a little bit while they're foraging. And then when a female is pregnant, her gestation period is about 152 to 172 days with the infants. being born anywhere from February to September. And the infants, can we just talk about infant IIs for a moment? Yeah. So they have the same... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as adults. Yes, yes.

Except their color is a little bit different. They usually start their life as mostly silver with a little stripe on their back. And the color will change as they mature to that dark brown, that chocolate brown or the black color. with the silver tips. The infants have green eyes and floppy ears. So their ears are not erect in...

round slash triangular like the adults. They're like floppy, floppy, cute little puppy ears, in my opinion. And then very bold green eyes, which your eyes will change and become a little bit more brown, golden in color as they... or yellow, if you will, as they age. But what's super fascinating about these little ugly duckling darling II infants is that they're very, very slow.

to grow and to mature. The eyes have a much slower developmental rate compared to other lemurs, which once again sets them apart. When they've been observing infants for up to a year, they found that the young don't even think about leaving the nest until they're at least eight weeks old. Start to begin to try some solid food out when they're 20 weeks old. And a young II doesn't really become proficient in all the locomotion techniques of being this.

arboreal, nighttime, acrobatic, foraging, amazing creature until it's about nine months old. And researchers have seen the AI. doing begging behaviors and making attempts to suckle the dam or its mom when it's about one year old. So compared to other lemurs, those stages are just... much more lagging or much slower. And of course, researchers don't really know exactly why, but they speculate a lot of it probably has to do with this really extreme.

and bizarre foraging behavior of the tap tap tap and the echolocating and then you know looking for grubs and other larva that has to be it's highly developed and And it takes time to probably learn that. And so they want to keep their young with them. And I should have mentioned, IIs give birth to just a singleton, right? Like primates, like us, for the most part.

With that being said, there's a ton of parental investment by the mom. And so therefore the II birth interval interval is about every two to three years, which is for. a primate or a lemur especially that's a really long birth interval and When you're talking about a species that's endangered and we want more numbers of them, if you only have a female II giving birth to one singleton, one infant, every three years?

I mean, it's going to take a long time for their numbers to bounce back, even if there weren't tons of threats to their conservation. It is. It is. I mean, it is concerning. I mean, like we said, they are endangered and they estimate anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 worldwide, you know.

And they don't reach sexual maturity until they're like two and a half years. So there's that as well if they're thinking of trying to have more female IIs, have more infants. Yeah. So it's definitely alarming. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, they've lost a lot of habitat like a lot of these species on Madagascar have. Again, talking about the conservation efforts that are ongoing. Obviously, this famine this year doesn't help, but... you know conservationists around the world are really focused in on madagascar because it is such a unique biome with so many unique species like the ii and of these

a few thousand i left they're in 16 protected areas across madagascar and like angie said it it is tough to captive breed them but there there is an effort of that ongoing you know zoos throughout the world helping and then obviously in the ground there so who do you want to support this week in highlight of iis

Well, Chris, you led me right into it is they are trying to learn more about breeding them under human care. And so this week, I want to give a huge shout out to the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, which has been really influential. breeding IIs and learning more about their behavior in general in order to help conserve them in the wild. And the Duke Lemur Center is known for not only the II, but several lemurs and trying to help.

understand and conserve them. And so I just am always so impressed by what they do for lemurs. And of course, I eyes with that, and they can be found at www.lemur. L-E-M-U-R.duke.edu. And so we'll put them out and they have a wonderful presence on Facebook as well and other social media sites. And so we'll put the Duke Lemur Center on our show notes as well because it's on my bucket list to go there and or.

Chris, we need to get somebody on, um, on their front to the podcast. Cause I think that they could really help inform us on, of course the I I and their plight, but just lemurs in general, which. are just household favorites by everybody. And anybody who goes to zoos loves seeing the lemurs. I love hearing the lemurs, learning more about them. And so, yeah, that'd be a great group to get on here as well. So check out the Duke Lemur Center.

Please do. Please do. And just a shout out to Dragon Nudi, who helped us lead the poll for next week's species. So thank you to our Patreon supporters. We will be covering that next week. But yeah, Angie. such a unique, unique cousin of ours. I'm glad we finally covered him and I hope people really appreciate him. Well, yeah, Kristen, I'm sure when we get done with this podcast, you and I will probably stay online chit-chatting for another half an hour or so about them.

Just so fun. And hopefully, hopefully you learned something. Take home message. The I I is not an evil demon, a night spirit, a night terror or a bad omen. And make sure and share that with a friend, but also. Share a photo with them and let us know if you think they're cute or only a face a mother could love. Just like Cupcake. Shout out to Jen. Thanks for listening. Thank you, everyone. Listen. Learn.

Share. Join the movement at allcreaturespod.com I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Safeguarding Sound Science, Evolution Edition. Evolution is the unifying principle of biology, yet it still breeds controversy a century and a half after Charles Darwin. Join us as we meet the passionate researchers and communicators who are expanding our knowledge.

and fighting to keep good science in our schools and politics. Subscribe to Safeguarding Sound Science on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you like to listen.