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Link to newsround

We're snot joking - lemur has special finger to pick nose!

Media caption,

These night-loving lemurs also love eating their own bogies!

Picking bogies might snot be as gross as we thought!

Now before you click away in disgust, hear us out - while nose-picking may be deemed impolite among us humans, it turns out a species of lemur has special fingers for doing exactly that.

They're called aye-ayes, and they live in Madagascar.

And researchers have, for the first time ever, recorded some of them using their long fingers to pick their noses, and then licking them clean - ew!

A juvenile orangutanImage source, Victoria Gill
Image caption,

At least a dozen species of primate, including orangutans, have been recorded picking their noses

Aye-ayes are a species of primate, which is the same family of animals as humans.

They're not the first primates to have been discovered with the gross habit - 12 species, including humans, have been documented eating their bogies.

Scientists have recorded their findings in the Journal of Zoology. They say that these lemurs and their special nose-picking fingers may shed some light on why any of us pick our noses at all.

Boy picking his noseImage source, Getty Images
Image caption,

Do people really pick their noses? I was born with mine!

Aye-aye captain!
  • Aye-aye lemurs can only be found in Madagascar

  • They're part of a group of called strepsirrhine primates

  • They're known as the world's largest nocturnal primate - nocturnal meaning that they're mostly awake at night

  • Their fingers make up 65% of the length of their hands

The research team used CT scans, which are usually used by doctors to take photos of the inside of your body.

They used them to look inside the skull and hand of an aye-aye lemur at the museum.

They were trying to imitate the position of the middle finger inside the nose - lead author Anne-Claire Fabre, a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum in London told the BBC: "I wanted to know, where is this finger going">