daubentoniid means any lemur in the family Daubentoniidae, of which the only living species is the aye-aye.
Why “daubentoniid” is a great word
Any lemur belonging to the family Daubentoniidae, of which the sole living survivor is the aye-aye. From translingual Daubentonia (genus name, from French naturalist Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton) + the connecting vowel -i- + -id (suffix forming family names in zoology). The family name Daubentoniidae was coined in 1863 by British zoologist John Edward Gray. Unlike "lemur"—a broad term for all primates of Madagascar—or "indriid"—which denotes the diurnal, leaf-eating leapers of the canopy—daubentoniid specifies a singular, nocturnal oddity: a solitary forager whose skeletal middle finger taps a percussive code on dead wood, whose ever-growing incisors gnaw through bark, and whose immense ears rotate like radar dishes in the dark. It is the taxonomic recognition that some branches of the tree of life grow so peculiar they form their own small, lonely family—a living relic shaped by silence and the slow, insistent pulse of survival on evolution’s far edge.
Etymology
From translingual Daubenton(ia) + -i- + -id.
noun
- Any lemur in the family Daubentoniidae, of which the only living species is the aye-aye.
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