There is one other creature in the world which does this, and that is the long-fingered possum, which is found in New Guinea. It has a long and skeletally thin fourth finger, which it uses for precisely the same purpose. There is no family relationship between these two animals at all, and the only common factor between them is this: an absence of woodpeckers. There are no woodpeckers in Madagascar, and no woodpeckers in Papua New Guinea. This means that there is a food source—the grubs under the bark—going free, and in these two cases it is a mammal that has developed a mechanism for getting
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Neat!
