Antsiranana to Maroansetra, Madagascar 16 - 18 April 08

"I'll show you an aye-aye, Sir"

The aye-aye is a weird looking lemur with bat-like ears, a long bushy tail and long, skeleton-like fingers. It is quite rare nowadays, because the Malagasy people have always thought they bring bad luck and therefore killed them. The island of Nosy Mangabe near to Maroantsetra used to be one of the few places in Madagascar where these strange creatures could still be seen but they were decimated in recent years by a cyclone. We were therefore delighted when a local guide Julien said he could find at least one for us.

The aye-aye is nocturnal so our tour was after dark. Rather suspiciously, we thought, Julien led us straight to a certain palm tree and, lo and behold, he shone his torch on the bright eyes of an aye-aye. The poor animal was very shy and kept itself hidden behind the branches. To get us a better view of it, Julien kept shaking the tree to try and make the creature run up to a more visible spot. When that didn’t reap results, he actually climbed the tree to shake the palm fronds closer to the aye-aye. He spent almost an hour trying to get us a good view of it but it hardly budged. The photo here is the best we could get. At least one can just see the aye-aye’s bat-like ears.