black caiman
melanosuchus niger latin

They came alive with little red lights - the eyes of black caiman getting ready to go out for the night.

The female black caiman only breeds once every 2 to 3 years.

Black caimans have been hunted almost to extinction for their skins.

The fact that black caimans lay, on average, around 40 eggs has helped them recover to some degree.

The black caiman is one of the largest extant reptiles.

Predation is so common that black caimans count on their young to survive via safety in numbers.

I read about a black caiman found dead with two outboard motors in its belly, swallowed whole.

Black caiman are relatively more robust than other crocodilians of comparable length.

As their name implies, the black caiman has a dark coloration, as an adult.

The starboard pontoon bristled with M-16s, all pointing toward the black caiman.

The black caiman and constrictors must hear his passage as the thrashes of something wounded.

Once the black caiman attains a length of a few feet, it has few natural predators.

Humans hunt black caimans for leather or meat.

In addition, black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) are abundant and also play an important ecological role.

The black caiman is also responsible for several recorded human fatalities every year within the Amazon basin and the surrounding regions.

Crocodilians are more numerous here than anywhere else in the world, and 10- to 15-foot black caiman laze about on the forest edges.

Among the largest predatory creatures are the black caiman, jaguar, cougar, and anaconda.

The rivers also abound with poisonous water snakes and the Amazon's black caiman, a relative of the alligator.

Poachers have turned to them as a source of "alligator" skins, hunting the black caiman to near-extinction.

The black caiman has dark-colored, scaly skin.

Mature black caimans have no natural predators, as is true of other similarly-sized crocodilian species given the size, weight and immense strength.

"Black caimans are fairly intelligent.

The black caiman is structurally dissimilar to other caiman species, particularly in the shape of the skull.

Local people still trade black caiman skins and meat today at a small scale but the species has rebounded overall from the overhunting in the past.

After the depletion of the black caiman population, piranhas and capybaras, having lost perhaps their primary predator, reached unnaturally high numbers.