HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

Cover Legend: The Aye-Aye: Plate 18, engraving; from Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, Volume V, 1866, p. 45. The Aye-Aye was discovered in 1780 on the west coast of Madagascar by French naturalist, Pierre Sonnerat (1748-1814) and has been a puzzle to taxonomists and evolutionists ever since. In appearance, the Aye-Aye is a cross between a squirrel and monkey, with sharp, rodent-like teeth and a unique finger formation that links it to no known species. Its long, slender middle finger resembles a piece of bent wire with hooked nails at the tips, making it an ideal tool to probe for grubs and to scoop them out of the deep hollows of woody forest trees. Given all the unusual features, taxonomists have been taxed to classify the Aye-Aye. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire noted its affinity with the opposum (Daubentonia), Gmelin listed it under the squirrels (Sciurius madagascariensis) in the 13th edition of Linnaeus' Systema Natura (1790), while Cuvier chucked the Aye-Aye into the "anomalous quadrupeds" bin, in the Regne Animal of 1798. Today the Aye-Aye is classified as the sole living representative of the family Daubentoniidae. The Aye-Aye has also sparked evolutionary debate. Sir Richard Owen, believing in "a forecasting, designing Power" proposed that the adaptation of that middle finger to its grub-rooting task was "not incompatible with … the constitution of an organized species by the operation of forces and influences which are part of the ordained system of things." Darwin took Owen on: in a letter to Thomas Huxley, June 27, 1863, he wrote (a la the Aye-Aye): "I do at last begin to believe that Owen will ultimately fall in public estimation. What nonsense he wrote!" Alas, gullible belief in "a forecasting, designing Power," a.k.a. Intelligent Design, remains alive today. Image courtesy of the MBLWHOI library (www.mblwhoilibrary.org), text by Ann Weissmann, exhibitions curator.