Primates are a diverse collection of animals that contain us hominids, apes and a variety of “monkey-like” critters. One of the most primitive, obscure and endangered is a type of Lemur, native to Madagascar, called the Aye Aye:

Largely nocturnal, and generally feared because of it’s slightly crazed appearance and creepy long fingers, apparently it uses its fingers to reach into decaying wood to pluck out juicy grubs – yum. I had never seen anything like it rendered in origami until I was proofing a soon to be published book by Kunsulu Jilkishiyeva titled “Origami Oddities”. I knew I had to try it.

Using a 45cm square of Damul Kraft (from Origami-shop) in brown/natural, the pre-creasing was fairly straight forward, the first collapse is complex (an “everything at once” style collapse I love). Isolating the features is pretty straightforward, but this is not a beginners fold, it contains some deliciously complicated maneuvers.

The design captures the long shaggy prehensile tail, large staring eyes, alert ears and the long fingers and toes beautifully. Someone with more skill could probably render it more lifelike than I, but I am pretty happy with the shaping I was able to achieve – there is lots of modeling capacity with this design.

The suggested paper size of 40cm square in Dual Thai or Shadow Thai might be a little small given the layer build up – even with the Damul Kraft at 45cm was very thick working the body and legs.

There are a few more models in the book I would like to try – the book is soon to be released and contains some unique designs of seriously uncommon critters – a good one for your library.