It has been considered a highly derived member of the family Indridae, a basal branch of the strepsirrhine suborder, and of indeterminate relation to all living primates. The aye-aye's classification with the order Primates has been just as uncertain. However, the aye-aye is also similar to felines in its head shape, eyes, ears and nostrils. The possession of continually growing incisors (front teeth) parallels those of rodents, leading early naturalists to mistakenly classify the aye-aye within the mammalian order Rodentia and as a squirrel, due to its toes, hair coloring, and tail. Evolutionary history and taxonomy ĭue to its derived morphological features, the classification of the aye-aye was debated following its discovery. If correct, then the name might have originated from Malagasy people saying ' heh heh' to avoid saying the name of a feared, magical animal. Another hypothesis proposed by Simons and Meyers (2001) is that it derives from ' heh heh', which is Malagasy for 'I don't know'. (2012), the widespread use of the Malagasy name indicates that the name could not have come from Sonnerat. However, American paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall noted in 1982 that the name resembles the Malagasy name 'hai hai' or 'hay hay', (also ahay, aiay, haihay ) which refers to the animal and is used around the island. According to Sonnerat, the name 'aye-aye' was a ' cri d'exclamation & d'étonnement' (cry of exclamation and astonishment). The French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat was the first to use the vernacular name ' aye-aye' in 1782 when he described and illustrated the lemur, though it was also called the ' long-fingered lemur' by English zoologist George Shaw in 1800-a name that did not stick. In 1863, British zoologist John Edward Gray coined the family name Daubentoniidae. Initially, Geoffroy considered using the Greek name Scolecophagus ('worm-eater') in reference to its eating habits, but he decided against it because he was uncertain about the aye-aye's habits and whether other related species might eventually be discovered. The genus Daubentonia was named after the French naturalist Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton by his student, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, in 1795. A second species, Daubentonia robusta, appears to have become extinct at some point within the last 1000 years, and is known from subfossil finds. It is currently classified as Endangered by the IUCN. The aye-aye is the only extant member of the genus Daubentonia and family Daubentoniidae. From an ecological point of view, the aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker, as it is capable of penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within. The only other living mammal species known to find food in this way are the striped possum and trioks (genus Dactylopsila) of northern Australia and New Guinea, which are marsupials. This foraging method is called percussive foraging, and takes up 5–41% of foraging time. It is characterized by its unusual method of finding food: it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood using its forward-slanting incisors to create a small hole into which it inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out.

It is the world's largest nocturnal primate. The aye-aye ( Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger. Daubentonia psilodactylus Schreber, 1800.

White finger pulls