Striped Possum

The striped possum, resembling a black-and-white squirrel, lives in Australia and Paupa New Guinea.

Striped Possum, illustrated by Joseph Wolf, 1858.

 It has a prehensile tail, and one of its fingers is much longer than the other. It hunts for its food using percussive foraging- like the Aye-aye.  It feeds on beetles and caterpillars from bark. This leads to the inference that the Striped Possum is literally the mammalian woodpecker.

Aye-Aye

The aye-aye, the largest nocturnal primate in the world, lives exclusively in Madagascar.

It has rodent-like teeth which never stop growing, and a thin middle finger. It gets its food in an unusual way, shared only by the striped opossum. This is called percussive foraging- it involves gnawing holes into the wood with its incisors and then using that finger to take out grubs from it.

An endangered species, the Aye-aye was once believed to be ill-omened, as its appearance was considered to predict death. As a result, they were killed by people.  They are also killed by farmers to protect crops.