CAIMAN TALK

Firstly, caimans are reptiles, and all reptiles share certain features, such as scaly skin, soft-shelled eggs and cold blood, which means they regulate their body temperature using the external environment rather than internal metabolism. Secondly, caimans are crocodilians and all crocodilians also share certain features. They are all semi-aquatic, their bodies long and slender, and their tails very powerful to drive them forward. They are all very powerful predators, their principal weapon being their very strong jaws, and they spend a lot of their time cruising around slowly with only their eyes and nostrils above the water, so that they can creep up on their prey. The crocodilians are a very old group of animals, dating back to the Mesozoic era 270 million years ago, which was also the time of the dinosaurs. The crocodilians of this time reached up to 15 metres (or 50 feet) long, and some of them probably fed on small dinosaurs. 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs became extinct, the crocodilians were also affected: previously there were 11 families of crocodilians living in the world, but 8 of them disappeared and now only 3 families still exist. These are: The GHARIALS found only in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, these are the oddest looking crocodilians and one of the largest, reaching from 5 to 6 metres long, with a life span of about 40 to 60 years. They live in rivers where they feed on fish caught by closing their very long narrow snouts quickly to the side. The CROCODILES found across a large area of the world in Africa, across Asia, in the north of Australia and in the Americas, crocodiles are the largest of all surviving crocodilians those in the north of Australia can reach 8 metres long. There are also estuarine crocodiles which are capable of swimming for several hundred kilometres out to sea. The ALLIGATORS found in the Americas, but quite confusingly, this group is made up of the true alligators, found in north and Central America, and the caimans, found in central and South America. Alligators and caimans appear rather similar to each other but they can easily be told apart if you know what characteristics to look for: the alligator has a broad, rounded head and a dark belly while the head of a caiman is slightly more pointed and the belly is white. Caimans also generally have much shorter tails than alligators. What is the difference between crocodiles and alligators? There are several ways to tell the two apart. For example: The shape of the snout: Alligators have wider, U-shaped snouts, while crocodiles tend to have longer, more pointed, V-shaped snouts. The teeth: the fourth bottom tooth of the alligator fits into a slot in its upper jaw, while in the crocodile it sticks out and can be seen from the outside when the mouth is shut, making it look like its smiling.

Their habitat: crocodiles have special glands in their tongues that can get rid of excess salt, which is why they can live in salt water habitats. Alligators have these glands too, but they dont work as well as in crocodiles, which is why they prefer to live in fresh water habitats. Finally, crocodiles are usually more aggressive than alligators. There are four different species of caimans found in this area: Dwarf Caiman Smooth-fronted Caiman Spectacled Caiman Black Caiman The Dwarf Caiman and the Smooth-Fronted Caiman are heavily armoured on the dorsal part of the body, and even small ones can be quite difficult to hold in the hand without gloves. They also appear to be more bad-tempered than the other two species, and even when they are caught they still struggle in the hand. The Smooth-Fronted Caiman has large, heavy scutes on the neck and a preference for streams within the forest, and it reaches about 1.8 metres long. The Dwarf Caiman also has large, heavy scutes but is less armoured than the SmoothFronted caiman. It lives mainly around lake margins and reaches about 1.5 metres long. As these two caimans are mainly found in backwaters, we wont see them out on the Tambopata River. We are more likely to see either the Spectacled or Black Caimans, so I am going to talk a bit more about them: The Spectacled or White Caiman is small to medium sized, with males generally reaching up to 2.5 metres long, but sometimes up to 4 metres and about 100 to 150kg in weight. Females are smaller, reaching a maximum size of 1.5 metres long. Its common name (spectacled caiman) comes from a bony ridge which is present between the front of the eyes, appearing to join the eyes like a pair of spectacles. Juveniles are yellow in colour with black spots and bands on the body and tail. As they mature they lose this yellow colour, and markings become less distinct; adults are dull olive-green. Of the six caiman species in the world the spectacled caiman is the most widespread, being distributed in South and Central America, parts of the Caribbean, and even into the United States (South Florida), where it has been introduced. They are found along river banks and in swamps. The Black Caiman is the biggest species in the alligator family, reaching up to 6 metres long and over 200kg in weight. They have black, scaly skin, and a bony ridge extending from over the eyes down to the snout. They also have a narrow snout and a flat forehead. They are found in oxbow lakes and flooded forest as well as large river banks, but they prefer quiet backwaters. The biggest caimans in the area are found predominantly in the lakes and swamps rather than in the rivers. This is because lakes and swamps are a much easier environment to live in than rivers are there are no currents to battle against. The biggest caimans probably push the smaller ones out of the lakes and swamps and into the rivers.

Caiman breeding: Caimans mate in shallow waters. Black Caimans become sexually mature at 5 to 10 years old and Spectacled Caimans at 4 to 7 years old. Black Caimans normally mate between October and January and the Spectacled Caimans between August and November if you hear a lot of splashing around in the water at this time of year, it may well be caimans mating. After mating the male disappears and leaves the female to raise the hatchlings alone. The female caiman builds a nest (by digging in the ground) about 10 to 20 metres away from the river or lake. The nest is usually about 1.5 metres long and 80 cm high, and often against a tree. Then the female Black Caiman will lay around 30 to 60 eggs and the Spectacled Caiman 14 to 40 eggs, which are around the size of ping-pong balls. After this she will cover the nest with leaves and sticks, and the decomposition of this vegetation helps to maintain the temperature of the nest. How does temperature affect caimans? The interesting thing about the reproduction of Caimans, and in fact of all Crocodilians, is that the sex of the hatchlings is not determined at the point of conception, as it is in most other animals. The important factor is instead the temperature at which the eggs are incubated. If the temperature of the nest is greater than 23 degrees, the eggs will turn out to be males, and if it is less than 23 degrees they will be females. So, the eggs at the top of the nest will be males, because they will be kept warm as they are closer to the sun, and those at the bottom will be females, because they will be kept cooler as they are more insulated from the sun. Scientists have found that mother caimans can actually regulate the sex ratio of their offspring. In areas with a lot of female caimans the mother caiman will dig a shallower nest, so that most of the eggs will be close to the sun, so ending up with more male baby caimans. You may wonder why a female caiman would want to fix the sex ratio of her hatchlings, but imagine a situation, for example, where a female caiman finds herself in a population with a large abundance of females and not many males, maybe because a certain disease has affected males more than females. Now if this was the case, the female caiman would benefit by having more sons than daughters, because a son would find a mate much more easily than a daughter, and so in the long-run the female caiman would have more grandchildren. This is in fact what all animals and plants are trying to do to produce as many descendants as possible. Another thing which is interesting about the way in which the sex of Crocodilians is determined is what it can tell us about the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were very closely related to the crocodilians, so it would seem quite likely that temperature affected their eggs in the same way it does those of crocodilians. So, if the temperature of the earth suddenly rose or fell by a few degrees 65 million years ago, as is strongly suspected, then it is possible that after a few generations there would have been only male or female dinosaurs remaining, hence the dinosaurs died out. Going back to caimans, after the eggs are laid, the female caiman will aggressively defend the nest. This is one of the few times when caimans can be very dangerous to humans. The incubation time is 5 to 6 weeks for Black Caimans and 9 to 11 weeks for Spectacled Caimans. After that, the eggs hatch out. To hatch out, the babies have a special egg-tooth on the end of their snout, which is used to break their way out of the egg. When they emerge, they cant get out of the nest themselves. Instead, they make a grunting noise and when the mother hears this she comes and lets them out of the nest.

Any mother who hears this noise will let the hatchlings out, even if they are not her own. After they hatch, the mother takes them to the river in her mouth, for their first swim. She then stays near them for the first two weeks of their life. Hatchlings begin to feed on insects, crustaceans and snails, and then begin to eat amphibians, fish (including piranhas) and even other caimans. Adult caimans will eat mostly live prey, but they will also feed on dead animals. Their favourite food is fish and capybara, but they will also eat crabs, rats, dogs, pigs, small deer, turtles and other caimans. They will also try to catch giant river otters, but in groups otters are quite fierce and caimans can only catch ones that are separated from the group. A group of giant otters can actually kill a caiman by encircling it and biting it on its soft underbelly. The principal killing weapons of caimans are their jaws and teeth. These are designed for biting hard and grasping tightly, not for chewing as in mammals like us. To kill, a caiman slams its jaws shut quickly on the victim. If this doesnt immediately produce the desired effect, the caiman will jerk its head about quickly to rip the prey to pieces, and if the victim starts off on the river bank, the caiman may drag it underwater to kill it by drowning. When caimans are eggs or hatchlings they are very vulnerable to attacks from lizards, tayras, opossums, snakes, fish, anacondas and even other caimans. Only about 5 % of the eggs or hatchlings survive to adulthood, but once young caimans get to above a certain size they have very few natural predators only other caimans and maybe anacondas. Anyway, this was the case until man came along and started interfering. Hundreds of caimans used to lie in groups along the river banks of the Amazon and its tributaries, but at the beginning of the 19th century it became very fashionable to have shoes, belts, handbags, wallets and jackets made from the skin of caimans, in particular the Black caiman, probably due to its markings and the good quality of the skin for tanning. It became a very big business in South America to hunt black caiman, and also 19th century travellers bored with the tedious trip up Amazonian rivers used to entertain themselves by taking shots at them on the riverbanks. Many caimans were also killed for their meat and oil, which would be mixed with expensive diesel oil for generators and engines. A lot of money was made by farmers in South America from shooting and selling caimans. However, a couple of unexpected things then happened to the disadvantage of the farmers: When caiman numbers decreased, suddenly the numbers of capybaras living nearby increased, because less of them were being eaten by caimans. These capybaras then started running over fields, destroying the farmers crops. When caiman numbers decreased, one would expect fish populations to increase, but actually the opposite happened. This was partly due to the importance of caiman faeces as nutrients for algae at the bottom of the food chain. Algae are food for zooplankton, which is food for small fish, and then large fish. If you take out the bottom of the food chain, the whole system is affected, so in many areas where caimans were overhunted, farmers had to deal with fewer crops and fewer fish to eat. This just shows in general that it is not possible to mess around with natural ecosystems, to take away species or to

introduce new ones, without upsetting a complex balance of interactions, resulting in unexpected and often negative outcomes. Between 1940 and 1980 the large-scale hunting of black caimans for their skins brought them to the edge of extinction. Due to hunting the numbers of black caimans remaining in the world today is only 1% of what is was 100 years ago. There are now only 3 areas left in the world where you will find viable populations of black caimans: one is here in south-eastern Peru / Western Bolivia, one is in Brazil, and the other is in French Guiana. Black caimans are therefore very rare, endangered animals. They have been in the highest category of the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) list since 1986, up there with animals like the Jaguar, Panda and White Rhino. When populations of Black caiman decreased in 1950, hunters started to hunt Spectacled caimans, but this didnt have as large an effect on the population of Spectacled caimans because they reproduce at a younger age, before they are large. It may be that most of the black caimans were killed before they had ever reproduced. The Spectacled caimans are not endangered yet, and Black caimans are recovering in this area. 10 years ago one in every 20 caimans we saw on the river was black and now it is about 1 in 10. Caimans are generally nocturnal. During the day they tend to sleep amongst the undergrowth at the sides of the water. On cooler days they are sometimes seen swimming around or lying on the river banks, but on cold days, when there is considerable cloud cover, the caimans remain in the water for longer periods than normal, because water temperature shows less extremes of variation than air temperature. The fact that they are nocturnal makes them very easy to find with a spotlight at night. This is because nocturnal animals have a reflective layer at the back of the retina in the eye, which is used to pick up as much light as possible from the surroundings by reflecting it back through the eye and so giving it a second chance at being picked up by the retina. If you shine a bright light on their eyes they will reflect back at you bright red. Anyone who has come across an animal such as a deer running across the road at night in the path of their headlights will have experience of this. Few people realise that crocodilians can move pretty quickly across land if the need to. This is done by lifting the body completely above the ground and moving the legs directly under the body, galloping in a similar way to a horse. Also, the muscles that close their jaws are extremely strong, but the muscles that open their jaws are weak, so you can hold their jaws shut with just one hand. Caimans are used to hearing the sound of the boat engine, but not voices, so please be quiet. Dont use your own torch in the boat or you will confuse the driver. Bring cameras.