#black caiman

[korostel-original-art]

[randomanimaloftheday]

Day 66#: Black Caiman

Today's animal of the day is the Black Caiman (Melanosuchus niger)!

Photo credit: Justin Walker

These South American crocodilians typically grow between 16 to 21 ft long and are the largest member of the alligator family (which includes alligators and caimans but not crocodiles) and are the third largest crocodilian native to the Americas. They are named after the greenish-black coloration of the adults, though juveniles often have white or yellow bands, which help them camouflage by breaking up the outline of their bodies, similar to a tiger's stripes.

Photo credit: Sebastián Vizcarra 

These aquatic reptiles inhabit freshwater rivers, lakes, and will also venture into flooded savannahs and grasslands during the rainy season. They are generalists and will feed on whatever animals they can get their jaws around, including both terrestrial and aquatic prey. Most of their hunting is done at night and they have been observed preying upon monkeys, capybaras, peccaries, armadillos, sloths, porcupines, agoutis, dogs, horses, deer, tapirs, river dolphins, turtles, and many other creatures. Adult male black caimans have even been reported eating smaller members of their own species!

Photo credit: ninedom on iNaturalist

Black caimans often share their habitat with giant otters and green anacondas; all three species are considered apex predators. However, since each species fills slightly different niches by eating slightly different prey and living in slightly different parts of the same habitat, they are usually able to avoid competition and co-exist alongside each other. Though all three will prey on smaller members of the other two species if they venture into their territories. Adult black caimans have even been known to ambush cougars and jaguars, though this is rare since both cats tend to avoid bodies of water that they know have adult black caimans. However, jaguars will go into the water to hunt juvenile black caimans, as well as adults of every other species of caiman.

Photo credit: Bruno Padilha

Black caimans are considered conservation dependent, which is in between being classified as near threatened and vulnerable. They used to be considered endangered back in the 1970s after they were heavily hunted for their hides during the 1950s. Luckily, when laws were put in place to protect them and the popularity of caiman leather died down some, the species was able to recover due to their large clutch sizes (around 40 eggs per clutch). However, in their absence, the smaller spectacled caiman took over many of the niches that black caimans used to fill, and the newer generations are unable to compete with them.

Photo credit: Oliver Patrick

This, combined with habitat loss and a population decrease in prey species, has caused some black caimans to venture closer to human-populated areas, which has led to an increase in attacks on livestock. This has also caused them to occassionally attack humans, though cases of human deaths caused by black caimans are poorly documented. But this causes local communities to attempt to cull these animals as revenge, which has put a dent in conservation efforts. To make matters worse, they're fairly rare in captivity, and the only zoo outside of their natural range to be able to breed them is the Aalborg Zoo in Denmark.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Andrey Gudkov

[vyskala]

Inktober olive tree and caiman

I missed a day, so two in one.

Olive tree tale: Posiedon, god of the Sea, and Athena, goddess of Wisdom and War, were at odds. Both wished to lay claim to the earthly land of the Attic Peninsula. To stake his claim, Posiedon rose up and plunged his trident deep into the Acropolis. His strike pierced through the dirt to became a deep well of salt water. This became the Sea of Erechtheis, a salt spring on the Acropolis. Athena made an olive tree spring forth beside the well. When the other gods of Olympus were called upon to judge which god would be the city's patron, it was decided that Athena's gift was the more worthy and precious one. Henceforth, the city became known as Athens, and olive trees revered as symbols of peace and prosperity throughout the Empire.

Colombian caiman tale: El Hombre Caimán ("The Alligator Man") who lives on the banks of the Magdelena River. He was once a human fisherman by the name of Montenegro. The fisherman enjoyed spying upon women bathing in the streams, and so he engaged the help of a shaman, who gave him two potions: one that shifted him into an alligator, and a second that returned him to human shape. The second potion required the assistance of a friend to apply it. After enjoying this for some time, there came a time when he returned from a jaunt to his friend, who clumsily opened the bottle. The liquid splashed across Montenegro's head and torso, which resumed man-form, but this left his lower half trapped as an alligator. Horrified at what he had become, shunned and hunted by his neighbours, he fled into the river and eventually out to the sea.

 

[dromaeosaurid]

Views of the skulls of a Mugger or Indian Crocodile (Crocodilus palustris, contemporary common name either mugger or marsh crocodile) & S. American Alligator (Caiman niger - contemporary common name black caiman), and of the heads of a Timsa or Nile Crocodile (Crocodilus niloticus) & N. American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis - contemporary common name American Alligator).

From the British Museum of Natural History's "Guide to the Gallery of Reptilia and Amphibia" (1906).

[oricami-art]

OC-Tober Day 2 - Onesie

Actually completed this one in an hour! No the onesie didn’t come standard with shoulder scale holes and he cut the tail off cause he has his own already lol

[animal-families-tournaments]

Crocodylia order, round 2: American Alligator vs Black Caiman

American Alligator

Black Caiman

Voting ended onNov 21, 2024

[tyrannoninja]

Beware the Black Caiman

Along the banks of the Amazon River in Pleistocene South America, this black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) has brought down a saber-toothed Smilodon populator for its next meal. S. populator may have been among the most massive felines known from the fossil record, with a body mass reaching as much as 880 pounds, but the largest black caimans on record have surpassed that at a whopping 1,650 pounds. To this day, the black caiman is the largest living member of the family Alligatoridae (even larger than the American alligator) and the largest predator in the Amazon basin.