This nose-picking lemur should have its own horror movie

One thing I didn’t expect to do this week was laugh my head off at a video of a rare lemur picking its nose. But here we are. Even if you’re a little grossed out, it’s worth sticking around to learn why scientists were so shocked by the lemur’s nose-picking ability.

Yes-yes (an threatened with extinction lemur that lives in Madagascar) is the star of a new a study published this week in the Journal of Zoology entitled “Review of nose picking in primates with new evidence for its occurrence in Daubentonia madagascariensis”. Daubentonia madagascariensis is the scientific name for aye-ayes.

The research team says a video of a captive aye-aye named Callie at the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina represents the first time an aye-aye has been recorded picking its nose and eating snot. Lead author of the study Anne-Claire Fabrebiologist from the University of Bern, captured the footage that you really have to see to believe.

Here’s the summary: Callie sticks her 3-inch (8-centimeter) long third finger up her nasal cavity. The finger almost disappears before she pulls it back and cleans it with her mouth. Aye-ayes have six digits on each hand.

Fabre called the nose shuffle “impressive” in a announcement from the Natural History Museum in the UK on Thursday.

Aye-ays normally use this long middle toe to dig food out of trees, but it seems to work quite well for digging into the depths of their own head. The nose-picking evidence adds a “yes-yes” to an exclusive list of about a dozen nose-picking primates, including humans, chimpanzees and gorillas.

Co-author of the study Roberto Portella Miguez was surprised by the initial video, but there was more to come. “We were even more surprised when we used a CT scan to see how nose picking works internally, and the scan was mind-blowing. We were shocked by the reconstruction that Ai-Ai’s finger could reach through his nose almost to the back of his throat,” he said

After you’ve had time to process the video, check out this graphic showing what the CT scan reveals. The green extension represents the ey-ey finger.

It has a great science dictionary to go with it. “Rhinotillexis” refers to nose picking and “mucophagia” is the act of swallowing. The team is interested in researchers to see if they have observed nose-picking activities in the wild, or if the aye-aye’s nose-digging might be related to captivity.

It’s more of a “wow, look at this crazy thing” moment. Researchers are studying not only which species pick their noses, but also why they do so, a topic that has not been widely studied. The behavior is seen in highly dexterous animals, although it may not be restricted to primates.

The “why” of all this is a little more unclear. The paper says that rhinothylexis “remains poorly understood, and only a few scientific studies have attempted to elucidate the origin and potential significance of this behavior.” Possible reasons may be to relieve the discomfort of dried mucus or to get some hydration by having a quick snack.

The research team hopes that its review of evidence of nose-picking in primates will spark more research into the neglected topic and also draw attention to ai-ai, which are threatened by habitat loss and hunting. The study also shows that deep scientific inspiration can come from unlikely places – like a licking snot lemur.