The Kid Should See This

Zookeepers weigh a baby aye-aye at the San Diego Zoo

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This wide-eyed baby aye-aye lemur is a rare sight — the first aye-aye born at the San Diego Zoo, and only one of 27 aye-ayes in North America. On October 15, 2015, zookeepers performed a one month checkup on the baby to make sure she was growing steadily. Fady, pronounced FAW-DEE, which means ‘taboo’ in Malagasy, weighed a healthy 9.03 oz. That’s a 5.43 oz weight gain since her birth on September 8th. From the video notes:

Aye-ayes live only on the island of Madagascar. They are the largest of the nocturnal primates and are the most specialized. Aye-ayes spend their lives in rain forest trees. They are dark brown or black in color, and are distinguished by a bushy tail that is larger than their body. Aye-ayes use a unique foraging method called β€œpercussive foraging.” The aye-aye uses its most distinguishing featureβ€”a thin, elongated and versatile middle finger on its handβ€”to tap on tree trunks and branches, while listening with its large rounded ears for hollows in dead or decaying wood. They search the hollows for their preyβ€”grubsβ€”and use their large teeth to rip open the bark until they find one. Then, the aye-aye uses its long finger to reach in and extract the grub.

As of 2015, there are just over 100 lemur species and subspecies endemic to Madagascar. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) redlists 22 of those species as Critically Endangered and 48 as Endangered.

Lemur or lemures means ‘ghosts’ in Latin. Also: Read more about how aye-ayes got their name.

Watch this next: Baby ring tailed lemurs cling to their mother in Madagascar. Plus, there are more zoo videos and more baby animal videos on this site.

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