A specialized long, thin, middle finger allows the aye-aye to insert its narrow middle finger to pull
grubs out which it has found by tapping on outside of trees. The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth and a special thin middle finger to fill the same ecological niche as a woodpecker. 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. From an ecological point of view the aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker, as it is capable penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within.