Long Fleshless Fingers

[Aschenbach]

According to this article I was reading the Aye-Aye is one of only two animals to possess a long thin fleshless finger for hunting insects. Does anyone happen to know the other animal?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/kalahari/ayeaye.html

[MargeB]

The Long-fingered Possum of New Guinea. No idea how it got that name.

[MargeB]

So what's the evolution story? Did they just all start trying to get stuff out of holes on trees and there was a differential survival of those with a slightly longer finger? Or was the slf a mutation first?

[Aschenbach]

Thanks MargeB for answering this question for me - it had me stumped.

It's amazing that two completely separate animals have evolved this feature. I've since read a bit more and the two animals both live on islands that have an absence of woodpeckers and they kind of fill the evolutionary gap so to speak. Since there's no relationship between these animals something else has caused them to develop this common feature. Apparently it's called convergent evolution.

There are nuts that the aye-aye can exploit that nonrodents are unable to exploit. The aye-ayes feed on foods that are abundant but difficult to harvest without some kind of morphological specialization. 

I saw on BBC's Predators series how the finger is also used to sense tiny  insect vibrations by tapping trees as these videos show.

http://www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Daubentonia_madagascariensis/more_moving_images.html

PS Was on your side 100% on dwarf throwing/ resigning user farce (if not someone else).