Aye-Aye Folklore Informant: Nate Dominy

Nathaniel Dominy is a professor in the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth College. He teaches undergraduate biology and anthropology courses that revolve around molecular biology as well as  primate anatomy, behavior, and ecology. In his free time, Professor Dominy enjoys reading and spending time in the outdoors. This past summer he took fly fishing lessons through Dartmouth’s Hook Course.

Professor Dominy was born in Austin, Texas to two, highly educated STEM professors.  His father earned a PhD in astronomy at the University of Texas and continued on to teach and research carbon stars at the University of Washington. His mother earned a Masters in physics. Therefore, from a young age, Professor Dominy felt pressured by his parents to pursue the sciences. Unfortunately though, this only fueled his aversion. His true passion was literature and later, anthropology, both of which he pursued as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. He credits his professors at Johns Hopkins for first introducing him to primate research. His professors helped him earn credits towards his anthropology major with an independent project on howling monkeys in Costa Rica. After graduating college, he worked towards a PhD in anatomy at the University of Hong Kong, focusing on primate color vision. Then, he moved to the University of Chicago to complete a post-doctorate on the molecular evolution of opsin genes. Before moving to Dartmouth College in 2010, his career in academia began at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he was a faculty member for seven years. In total, he has over twenty years of experience studying primates in their natural environments.

We decided to interview Professor Dominy for our aye-aye folklore collection because he has done research with aye-ayes at the Duke Lemur Center, visited Madagascar (aye-ayes’ homeland), attends many primate conferences where he engages in aye-aye discourse with other researchers, and teaches his Dartmouth undergraduates about aye-ayes in lecture.

Professor Dominy first heard of aye-ayes in an undergraduate anthropology class. Though this experience was brief, as only one slide was dedicated to the aye-aye, it sparked his interest. On his own time, he began watching related BBC documentaries and reading academic papers by Elwyn Simon, a famous professor and primate conservationist at Duke Lemur Center. This foundational knowledge helped Professor Dominny integrate other experiences, anecdotes and research findings into his aye-aye schema.

Professor Dominy’s research with aye-ayes at the Duke Lemur Center focuses on how these creatures engage their anatomy to adapt to their environment. He is interested in their unique hearing, color vision, temperature regulation of their middle digit, and preference for alcohol. He has found that aye-aye hearing is more sensitive than other lemur’s of similar body size to aid in its foraging behavior. Specifically, because aye-ayes use a method of tap-scanning to forage food, it is important they are able to hear their own finger taps. He also found that aye-ayes have heightened color vision. This unusual sensitivity of their blue opsin allows them to see their own scent marks. Further research is currently being conducted to determine how well aye-ayes see color at low light levels. Additionally, Professor Dominy has found that aye-ayes’ unique middle finger is significantly cooler than other digits during periods of inactivity. He has collaborated with a current Dartmouth undergraduate, Sam Gochman, and found that aye-ayes have adapted to tolerate alcohol very efficiently and enjoy consuming it.

Professor Dominy was able to travel to the Spiny Forest in the southwest region of Madagascar for two weeks during his PhD program at the University of Chicago. During this trip he did not personally come into contact with any aye-ayes. Unfortunately, aye-ayes are rare, particularly in this area. Though, his visit exposed him to local Malagasy beliefs about elements in their environment, which motivate their elaborate system of taboos or ‘fady.’ Aye-ayes, as we will describe in our project, are a key element of fady and omen of death among the Malagasy. Therefore, he did not talk about aye-ayes with locals, as they have strong prohibitions about even referring to them. However, he was able to have detailed conversations with fellow researchers while in Madagascar. He described that after long days of field work, he sat around the fire and talked casually with his fellow, post-doc colleague about Madagascar, the Malagasy people, and aye-ayes.  A similar, ‘campfire, storytelling’ environment is common among researchers at the primate conferences Professor Dominy attends. These professional sessions focus on the current research being conducted, but also serve as a platform for researchers to share narratives and anecdotes about their experiences working with primates like the aye-aye. The scholarly community is small enough that these anecdotes become widely known and take on the form of folklore. Overwhelmingly, Professor Dominy has found that “when you study the aye-aye, you can’t help but learn about the cultural significance of the aye-aye and the folklore surrounding it.” Thus, his extensive research and experiences discussing aye-ayes with colleagues make him a valuable resource for this folklore collection project.

Nate’s pages: 

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