The nightmare is a classic one. You think you're having a good time, but when you look in the mirror you see that you've been caught on camera.
The nose-picker is an aye-aye, a primate that is so good at discretion that this is the first time we've ever seen it digging for a meal.
Scientists believe that the middle finger of the animal is so long that it extends into the pharynx.
The aye-aye is one of at least 12 primate's that are known to pick their noses with their hands.
We might be able to figure out why the hell booger-eating, or mucophagy, is a thing.
The aye-aye has sticks in it's mouth. The middle finger is long, thin, and hooked, and is an important tool for finding food.
The animal uses a finger to find hollows in trees and then uses the same finger to get insects. The crows use sticks for the same thing.
It should be no surprise that the nocturnal creature uses its finger for booger-mining.
The behavior was first spotted by Anne-Claire Fabre, a Biologist at the University of Bern in Germany and the Natural History Museum in the UK.
She says that it was impossible to not notice that the aye-aye picked its nose. "This was not just a one-off behavior, but something that it was fully engaged in, and it was sampling everything it found by licking its finger clean."
The finger can go all the way down into the aye-aye's throat.
There is no scientific consensus on why. It's possible that it's only for the purpose of cleaning mucus out of the nose, but then why eat it?
According to one study, the boogers' salty flavor is satisfying. Some people claim that eating boogers helps boost the immune system or preventsbacteria from sticking to teeth
Fabre says there isn't much evidence about why animals pick their noses.
The majority of the papers were written as jokes. There are a few in psychology but not much in biology. One study shows that picking your nose can spread germs, while another shows that people who eat their own food have less dental problems.
Many of the tools used for other purposes have been observed using tools for nose-picking.
It's not clear if this is significant or if it's just that tool-using primate are the most studied. It's possible that these animals have the special anatomy that allows it.
The researchers think it's a behavior that warrants further investigation.
They wrote in their paper that future studies should investigate roles for this behavior that are beyond its characterization as a repugnant habit.
Comparative studies reviewing nose picking and mucophagy across additional primate taxa are likely to provide further insight into its origin, function, and evolution.
The research has appeared in a journal.
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