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The history of the name (etymology) is not known precisely. The name sounds similar to "heh heh", a way of saying "I don't know" in the native tongue (Malagasy). Because the aye-aye is often feared as a bad omen or evil spirit, the local people avoid naming the animal directly.

Sonnerat (in 1782) claimed that the name came from a "cry of exclamation and astonishment" from the local guides. However, the aye-aye (locally: "hai hai" or "hay hay") is known by this name across the island, and it is unlikely that the local people adopted a name given by a European.

Some lemur names in Madagascar derive from vocalizations made by the animal, but this is not the case with the aye-aye.

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Guido Larkin

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1y ago
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11y ago

Many hypotheses have been made for the origins of the aye-aye's common name, but no one really knows where the animal obtained its strange name. One of the most plausible hypotheses is that the Malagasy people, who considered the aye-aye magical and thus feared it, would not say its name so when Europeans asked what the animal was called they replied "heh heh" which means "I don't know" in Malagasy. To Europeans, this sounded like "aye aye."

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11y ago

They have relatively large eyes to help them collect light while they are active at night. The species is nocturnal.

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11y ago

they are called aye ayes because they usaully do meetings with each other and a meeting is a aye aye and if you want to know what they look like they are like lemurs but there smaller

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11y ago

There is no known benefit to having yellow eyes, so we don't know.

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Q: Why are aye-ayes called aye-ayes?
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