Unidan, AKA Ben Eisenkop, is an ecosystem ecologist who first rose to fame (infamy?) on Reddit by popping up in posts across the site, answering any queries and concepts pertaining to biology and ecology. Eisenkop will be a columnist for Upvoted, where he’ll be spotlighting a new creature every week.

Today’s bizarre beast hails from the island of Madagascar, a hotbed of biodiversity and home to tons of odd endemic creatures. This creepy-looking fuzz ball is known as the aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis), a member of the lemur family, whose name has some muddled origins. Some claim it was named in a fit of exclamations over its first sighting, others claim it resembles the Malagasy word for the animal. Aye-ayes were even briefly named “chats avec mains,” translating from French to mean “cats with hands.”

While the name is curious enough, the hands are certainly what elevates the aye-aye to bizarre status. On each hand, the fourth finger is incredibly elongated and the third digit is incredibly thin.

Why the weird fingers? For eating, of course! Well, they don’t eat their fingers, but they use their fingers to reach grubs inside of decaying trees. The thin finger is for tapping the trees to hear if it’s a good spot for foraging.

Aye-ayes will use their large ears to press against the tree and listen intently for hollow grooves made by grubs. Once located, the aye-aye will create a hole and then probe inside with their long bony fingers until they retrieve the delicious grubby morsel that lies inside!

How do they create the hole? Oh, easily, they just chew through the bark. With specialized incisors that never stop growing (analogous to rodents like beavers), they can gnaw right through tough bark to get at their prey. You can watch the process in the video below, courtesy of National Geographic:

Some native communities have been sufficiently terrified by the aye-aye’s appearance to even build up a superstition about them. While completely harmless to humans, some have believed that an aye-aye’s presence in the community is the presence of a demon or monster, and that if the aye-aye points at you with its long clawed digit, you will be struck dead on the spot. Others, such as the Sakalava, go even further, claiming aye-ayes sneak in to bedrooms at night and shove a finger through your heart.

Due to this superstition, many aye-ayes are killed on sight in native communities in Madagascar. Sadly, since the forests of Madagascar are removed, aye-ayes often end up being forced to encroach on human areas to obtain food, resulting in more human contact and subsequently, more superstitious killings of aye-ayes.

Because of habitat loss and killings, aye-ayes are now considered an endangered species, so, if you’re interested in having oddballs like aye-ayes around for future generations, consider a donation to the World Wildlife Fund and sponsor one today!