Aye-Aye
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40 free Aye-Aye trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The aye-aye looks like an animal assembled from spare parts: huge ears, teeth that never stop growing, and one skeletal finger on each hand that it drums against tree trunks to find its dinner. It lives only on Madagascar, comes out after dark, and has puzzled scientists ever since Europeans first described it in the eighteenth century. These fun facts about the aye-aye are set out as a quiz. The questions cover how it hunts and what it eats, the odd anatomy of its hands, teeth and ears, where it sleeps and how it gets around, and the superstitions that have made it one of the most feared animals on the island. Others look at the naturalists who argued over what kind of creature it was, the writers and film-makers who made it famous, and the breeding programmes working to keep it alive. It suits animal lovers, students working on a lemur or rainforest project, and anyone who has seen a photo of an aye-aye and wondered what on earth it was. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a handful of facts worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The aye-aye uses its long middle finger for which very human bad habit, reaching almost to its throat?
Picking its nose
Picking its nose is a real aye-aye habit: the thin third finger slides in through a nostril and can reach the throat. The animal then eats whatever it collects.
Q 02Madagascar has none of which birds, whose job of digging grubs out of tree trunks the aye-aye does instead?
Woodpeckers
Woodpeckers never reached Madagascar, so the aye-aye fills their niche. It gnaws into the trunk with its front teeth and pulls out larvae with one thin finger.
Q 03Ever-growing front teeth got the aye-aye wrongly classified at first among which group of mammals?
Rodents
Rodents seemed the obvious fit to early naturalists, who filed the aye-aye as a kind of squirrel. No other living primate has teeth that grow throughout life.
Q 04In Malagasy folk belief, a person pointed at by an aye-aye's thin middle finger is marked for what?
Death
Death is what the pointing finger is said to bring, which is why aye-ayes are often killed on sight. The superstition is one of the main threats to the species.
Q 05Scientists found that the aye-aye has a hidden pseudothumb, an extra digit also found on which animal's paw?
Giant panda
Giant panda paws carry the same kind of pseudothumb, built from a wrist bone. The aye-aye's version has three muscles to move it and even its own fingerprint.
Q 06Thanks to a gene variant shared with humans, aye-ayes prefer nectar with more of which substance?
Alcohol
Alcohol is easy for aye-ayes to break down thanks to an enzyme mutation otherwise seen only in humans, chimps and gorillas. In tests they chose the strongest nectar on offer.
Q 07In DreamWorks' Madagascar films, which sceptical adviser to the lemur King Julien is an aye-aye?
Maurice
Maurice, voiced in the films by Cedric the Entertainer, is the aye-aye at King Julien's side. Julien seldom listens to his advice.
Q 08The aye-aye is the only primate thought to find its prey by which method?
Echolocation
Echolocation of a kind is how the aye-aye finds hidden grubs: it taps up to eight times a second and reads the sound that comes back. Its huge ears cup forward to catch it.
Q 09The ancestors of the aye-aye and other lemurs are thought to have rafted to Madagascar from where?
Africa
Africa is where the single ancestor of all lemurs is thought to have set out, rafting across the sea during the Paleogene. Some researchers think aye-aye ancestors made the crossing separately.
Q 10The aye-aye holds which record among the world's nocturnal primates?
Largest
Largest is the aye-aye's title among primates that are active at night. Mouse lemurs, its fellow night-shift primates on Madagascar, are the smallest primates of all.
Q 11Which cat-like carnivore, the main predator of lemurs on Madagascar, is thought to prey on the aye-aye?
Fossa
Fossa diets are more than half lemur, and the animal has been compared to a small cougar. Little else is thought to trouble a nocturnal aye-aye high in the canopy.
Q 12Which British science fiction writer went looking for the aye-aye in 1985, a trip that led to Last Chance to See?
Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams made the trip with zoologist Mark Carwardine for The Observer newspaper. The pair went on to seek out other vanishing animals for a BBC radio series and book.
Q 13Aye-ayes are active after dark, so where do they spend the daylight hours curled up asleep?
In treetop nests
Q 21Despite a large brain for its body size, the aye-aye has tested poorly at which skill in experiments?
Using tools
Using tools it has to hold proved a weak spot in tests. That is odd for an animal that carries a built-in probe, its thin middle finger, on each hand.
Q 22Aye-ayes have pointed claws on every digit except which opposable pair, used to dangle from branches?
Big toes
Big toes are the exception: they are opposable, which lets an aye-aye dangle from a branch by its feet. The animals often cling upside down as they move about.
Q 23Which marsupial of New Guinea and Queensland hunts grubs like the aye-aye, with a long fourth finger?
Striped possum
In treetop nests, each a closed ball of leaves and twigs with one entrance, wedged in a fork high in the canopy. Different aye-ayes may use the same one on different days.
Q 14The grubs an aye-aye hooks out of tree trunks are mostly the larvae of which wood-boring insects?
Beetles
Beetles are the main prize, especially the longhorn family, whose fat larvae tunnel through wood. An aye-aye can spend up to 80% of its night feeding and travelling through the canopy.
Q 15As in many other lemurs, which aye-ayes are dominant and get first access to food?
Females
Females outrank males whenever aye-ayes meet, which gives a mother first claim on food. Their home ranges never overlap with each other's, though each overlaps at least one male's.
Q 16Which university runs the lemur centre in Durham, North Carolina, that houses and breeds the rare aye-aye?
Duke
Duke University's centre began in 1966 with a primate colony moved from Yale. Its founding eight aye-ayes have descendants in zoos from London to Tokyo.
Q 17Why does an excited or alarmed aye-aye raise the long white guard hairs scattered through its dark coat?
To look bigger
To look bigger is the likely purpose: with the hairs on end an aye-aye can seem twice its real size. Keepers also see it during play between mother and infant.
Q 18At one US lemur centre, aye-ayes tap, gnaw a small hole and finger-scoop the inside of which food?
Eggs
Eggs get the full grub-hunting routine: tap, chew, then dip a flexible middle finger in for the yolk. The delicate shell is left intact except for one small hole.
Q 19Farmers in Madagascar sometimes kill aye-ayes for raiding plantations of lychees, mangoes and which palm fruit?
Coconuts
Coconuts are a favourite, and an aye-aye scoops out the flesh with its middle finger. Farmers treat the animal as a pest, though there is no direct evidence it does real harm to crops.
Q 20The aye-aye's thin middle finger swivels freely thanks to a type of joint humans have in which body part?
Hip
Hip joints are the ball-and-socket type, and the aye-aye's probing finger is unique among animals in having one at its base. That lets it turn in almost any direction inside a grub tunnel.
Striped possum hunting copies the aye-aye's routine on a distant limb of the mammal family: it drums on wood, rips it open with its teeth and hooks out larvae with a long clawed finger.
Q 24Which zoo founded by the writer Gerald Durrell keeps the international studbook for the aye-aye?
Jersey Zoo
Jersey Zoo imported six wild aye-ayes in 1990 and also manages the European breeding programme. Durrell opened the park in the Channel Islands in 1959.
Q 25Which British anatomist's detailed study finally settled that the puzzling aye-aye was a primate?
Richard Owen
Richard Owen, the man who coined the word dinosaur, published the anatomical study that ended the argument. Until then naturalists could not agree whether the animal was a primate, a gnawing mammal or a marsupial.
Q 26The aye-aye's hidden pseudothumb is thought to make up for its specialised fingers by helping with what?
Gripping
Gripping is the job the long, thin fingers do badly, so the pseudothumb takes up the slack. It can push with a force of almost half the animal's body weight.
Q 27One theory traces the name aye-aye to a Malagasy phrase said to avoid naming a feared animal, meaning what?
"I don't know"
"I don't know" is the meaning of the Malagasy "heh heh" in one proposed origin, put forward in 2001. Others link the name to the local word hai-hai or to a cry of astonishment.
Q 28Why does an aye-aye curl up its long, slender fingers when it walks along a branch?
To protect them
To protect them from the forces of walking and leaping, an aye-aye curls its delicate fingers out of harm's way. It may also shift its weight toward its hindquarters.
Q 29Helped by strong shoulders and a sturdy upper arm, the aye-aye can climb down a tree trunk in which way?
Head-first
Head-first descent is possible thanks to a robust shoulder girdle and a strong upper arm bone. Going up, an aye-aye makes a series of vertical leaps.
Q 30In 1966, nine aye-ayes were moved for safekeeping to which island reserve off north-east Madagascar?
Nosy Mangabe
Nosy Mangabe, a small forested island in Antongil Bay, became a refuge when the species seemed close to vanishing. It is still one of the best places to glimpse an aye-aye after dark.