nick baker’s weird creatures
the night stalker (7/8)

Continuing his second series of compelling nature documentaries, Nick Baker goes on the trail of another of the planet’s strangest beasts. In this evening’s programme, he heads to Madagascar in search of a vision from his childhood nightmares – the extremely rare aye aye lemur, or Night Stalker.

“Now you may laugh,” says Nick Baker at the beginning of his latest quest, “but as a child I had recurring nightmares about one of the world’s rarest lemurs... to me, this animal was terrifying.” Nick is talking about the aye aye lemur, an extraordinary nocturnal primate indigenous to the island of Madagascar. The aye aye’s wide eyes, bat-like ears, rodent-style incisors and long fingers combine to create its striking appearance.

Madagascar is a haven of unusual beasts, home to some 70 different species of lemur. The island’s unique wildlife has developed in isolation ever since it broke away from a larger land mass some 180 million years ago. Its species have evolved to fill “ecological niches” in the island’s wildlife that would normally be filled by other mammals.

At first glance, Nick admits that the aye aye is an exceedingly odd animal. “You’re not supposed to look like this if you’re a primate,” he says. Dr Anna Nekaris of the Natural History Museum describes them as “a contradiction to every rule”. “It’s got huge ears like a bat,” she says. “It’s got incisors like a rodent and it’s very rare that another animal other than a rodent should have these continually growing incisors.”

The aye aye is an endangered species because of its low birth rate and negative image in local folklore. Nick learns that Madagascar is full of “fadys” or taboos concerning aye ayes, including the rule that if you see one, you will immediately die, unless you kill it yourself. Other superstitions include the belief that if an aye aye comes to your village, everyone must decamp to avoid bad luck. These fadys, along with the lemur’s habit of attacking crops, mean that they often suffer brutal treatment from humans.

As he ventures into the forests of Madagascar, Nick encounters some of the aye aye’s cousins, including mouse lemurs, golden bamboo lemurs and indri lemurs, who live in the tree tops and call to each other every morning.

But Nick is determined to locate the legendary Night Stalker, which he describes as a “hodgepodge of an animal”. “It’s about the size of a cat, with the ears of a bat, the snout of a rabbit, the tail of a squirrel, the teeth of a rat and hands which could be straight out of a horror film,” he says. Nick travels first to the dense rainforests on the island of Nosy Mangabe, set up as a reserve for aye ayes in the 1950s, before heading to the promisingly named Aye Aye Island.

At last, Nick catches his quarry on film when he coaxes an aye aye out of the trees with a coconut. Meanwhile, Dr Nekaris provides further astonishing details about the creature’s biology, including its promiscuous mating system and lengthy sexual couplings – the longest of any primate. Nick also points out the curious location of the aye aye’s nipples – in the groin area. “Her nipples aren’t in the right place, certainly not for a primate,” he says. “Why? Well, nothing else about the aye aye is standard, so why not?”

Nick also has a chance to watch the aye aye forage for food when it plants its ear against a tree and taps for hollow areas. Once the aye aye finds the right spot, it bites through the bark and extracts grubs with its long middle finger.

Having confronted the demon of his dreams, a delighted Nick is able to revise his impression. “It’s rare, it’s special and it’s surprising,” he declares. “The weirdest of the weird!”