Aye-aye – look what’s coming to Durrell for Christmas!

Saturday 20 September 2014

It was once thought they only liked the dark, but the spotlight will soon be on two new additions to Durrell.

Pan and Imp – two young male Aye-ayes from Denver Zoo have arrived in the Island after crossing the Atlantic and the Trust are now working on creating the perfect place for them to live when they come out of quarantine in December.

Durrell’s Rick Jones said: “We’ve found that Aye-ayes will actually go out and sleep in the sun and now the impetus is for us to have enclosures with outside access too so that they can choose whether they want to be inside or outside.”

Durrell is already home to four of the endangered primates – two that the late Gerald Durrell brought back with him from Madagascar.  This new pair will bring fresh genes into the captive population.

The unusual looking lemurs have been persecuted in the wild for many years with many people in their native Madagascar scared they are an omen of death and evil. Their biggest threat now is deforestation.

Aye-ayes are Madagascar’s answer to the Woodpecker – they have great night vision and hearing and tap branches to hear whether there is movement inside. They use an elongated middle finger to fish out grubs in the same way as a Woodpecker uses its beak. When they are not feeding the finger has no bloody supply and becomes like a dead finger.

The Trust hopes another female will be arriving in the Island from Japan sometime next year so hopefully it won’t be long before Pan and Imp are paired off and we hear the patter of tiny claws at the wildlife park!