Black Caiman

[Dark Jaguar]

BLACK CAIMAN vs HUMAN CONFLICT.

Here's an interview with the Biologist and Researcher Adriana Malvasi talking about the case of human's remaining of an adult man being found inside a Black Caiman's stomach.

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https://g1.globo.com/to/tocantins/notici...anos.ghtml

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Interviwer: It was really a surprising result and it was expected to be an animal found in the black caiman's belly but not a human in there, how was that possible ?

Adriana Malvasi: The Black Caiman is a top predator and these large animals can eventually prey on mammals of big sizes usually when these mammals are on the river banks. Its an aquatic animal but it can get out of the water to catch a prey and take it back to the water so staying very close to the banks in areas where there are black caimans is dangerous but another possibility is for example the drownings because the black caiman also consume chunks of preys that are already drowned so its also possible.


Interviwer: Will the medical exam identify if the victim was already dead or if the black caiman provoked that death ?


Adriana Malvasi: Its hard to happen black caiman preying on humans, normally its not part of their feeding habits but it is possible and eventually it can happen but these are rare cases as we got little reports of predation on humans, in this case it may have happened but also it might have been an accident with the person and then the black caiman came and dismembered the body which is part of the Black Caiman's habits and feeding behavior.

Interviewer: We're now on the drought season where the black caiman was killed and its a region that suffers alot with this drought issue and this affects the reproduction of the fishes, could it be the black caimans is lacking its natural preys ?


Adriana Malvasi: Yes it could, it could be lacking its food but another thing that could be happening is that the caimans during rainy season or when there is little drought most of the times they will venture into the flooded areas towards the Igapós so they stay further into the forest where it floods but when you don't have enough floodings they will stay alot on the riverbed and sometimes the increase in numbers of caimans on the riverbed due to the little water within the forests may also increase the chances of accidents.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Interviewer: In this case the residents ended up killing the black caiman because they saw its belly was very big that could be the man that was missing. Is this an evironmental crime ? will this provoke even more environmental imbalance that could lead to even more deaths ?

Adriana Malvasi: I know its hard, humans deal with emotions, feelings and everything but the black caiman is in its natural environment, its an aquatic animal, we are the ones going into their environments and we also gotta remember that these cases are very rare and in addition to that we don't really know what exactly happened, the person might have already been drowned and after that this case occured, its a possibility.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Interviewer: We've recently had the case where a caiman emerged at a crowded beach, is there reasons for the bathers of the beaches of Luzimangues, Palmas, Graciosa, Prata... to be worried ?

Adriana Malvasi: Well, First the ideal would be to make a study of local ecology population, at least to count the number of black caimans per linear km of river to have an idea.

Interviwer: Has this count been done in the state ?

Adriana Malvasi: In some places yes, we are eventually called on partnership with environmental agencies and we do the counting of caimans in some rivers but in the specific case of Luzimangues beach we haven't done the count yet but its interesting to do so in order to find out if there's a bigger number than expected of caimans per km but the Tocantins river which is a natural environment of the Black Caiman people has to avoid venturing into deep waters and also by staying on river banks they gotta be really careful.

*This image is copyright of its original author

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Human remainings found in the Black Caiman's stomach.

GRAPHIC IMAGE

*This image is copyright of its original author

Interviewer: About its digestion, as we saw in the images (of the human remainings) the bones were smaller, it didn't look like human's bones, we wanted to believe it was remainings of another animal but as they were very reduced in size, is the digestion time of this animal that fast ?

Adriana Malvasi: Not necessarily, the digestion in reptiles overall is a more slower digestion especially cause they are ectotherms meaning they warm/heat their bodies with external light, with solar light (sunlight) unlike us humans as we do our digestion with the internal temperature with our metabolism hence why we keep a level of constant temperature whereas the caiman they warm up with the sunlight and chill (cool down) in the water, every animal like that got a more slower digestion and in this case it was impressive that the digestion occurred so fast, its not common.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Interviwer: About the researches you have done by UFT, does it reveal any sort of change in behavior or some type of aggressiveness or a sort of imbalance that might be going on in the fauna ?

Adriana Malvasi: Aggressiveness no, but we have registered last year that it had a big level of mortality of Caimans/Black Caimans due to the drought, and this is interesting because what may have happened was that probably the Caimans may have been trying to cross into another more flooded area and due to the intense drought their body overheated as they are ectotherms and then they have a physiological stop (inactive) due to the excess of temperature and many caimans died so this is interesting because this drought led the Caimans/Black Caimans to the riverbed and they may even be approaching beaches that they normally wouldn't.

*This image is copyright of its original author

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