Review and images by stemturtle, edited by bmathison1972
The aye-aye, Daubentonia madagascariensis, is a bizarre lemur, with ears like a bat, continuously growing incisors like a beaver, and a long bony middle finger for extracting grubs from under bark. These are adaptations for percussive foraging, which is to tap on wood, echolocate movement, chew a hole, and hook the grub. Sbell presented information about the species in an excellent review of the Colorata aye-aye. We focus here on the PV figure.
This link shows the set of 8 Lemurs and Prosimians by Play Visions posted on the Animal Toy Forum. Released in 1999, the figures are rare today.
The model portrays this primate convincingly, although the hand was simplified for the molding process. A wire would be required to realistically represent the delicate third finger that is used for percussive foraging. The longer fourth finger, which is used to scrape pulp out of fruit, also lacks detail.
The color of the fur is dark brown, the face gray, with white marks on the digits, and above and below the orange eyes. I like the texture of the fur.
The length of the figure is about 3 inches (7.6 cm), and the live length is about 37 inches (94 cm), giving a scale of about 1:12.
The belly is marked with the circled PV logo, 1999, and the number 6 between the front legs. The name aye-aye is marked on the left side of the tail.
I dearly treasure the PV aye-aye. Like forum member Aye-Aye Fan wished on the Animal Toy Forum, I hope Safari Incredible Creatures might create a more detailed model someday.