This gremlin looking creature is called the aye-aye. Found only on the island of Madagascar, most people have been spared the knowledge of its existence.
Until now.
The aye-aye’s knobby hands are the things you see opening your bedroom door in your nightmares. The creak of the door, as those bony fingers wrap around your doorframe is horror trope for good reason.
Picture this.
You’re a little insect larva with your little larva friends peacefully traversing the length of your tree trunk home, when suddenly, the ceiling shakes. Fear takes over. You know what comes next – the finger of doom. You’ve seen the monstrous middle finger that digs underneath your tree bark ceiling snatch away other larvae, never to return again. So you run. And then everything. Goes. Black.
Wow. That was dark.
But that’s exactly what the aye-aye does. It knocks on the bark of trees with its long middle finger and listens for movement under the bark. It then uses the same middle finger to fish little critters out.
The aye-aye are considered a bad omen to many native people of Madagascar, so the natives used to kill them on sight. Nowadays they are protected by law, but that would explain why aye-ayes have bugged out eyes and an expression of suspicion permanently etched onto their faces.