Spectacled caiman
Caiman crocodilus
— Where the name comes from
Caiman comes from acayouman, the word the Arawak of the Antilles used for these animals, taken into the Spanish of the conquistadors. Crocodilus is the Greek krokódeilos, “pebble-worm”, from krókē and drîlos: according to Herodotus it was the Ionians of Egypt who named them so, because they saw them lying in the sun on the shingle like lizards on a wall. The “spectacles” are the bony ridge joining the two eyes.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Crocodilians
- Habitat
- Slow rivers, marshes, lagoons, artificial ponds
- Range
- From southern Mexico to Brazil and Peru
- Size
- 1.8–2.5 m, 30–60 kg
- Diet
- Fish, crabs, aquatic insects, birds, small mammals
- Lifespan
- 30 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
The bony ridge between the eyes looks like the frame of a pair of glasses.
- 02
It changes colour slightly with temperature, darkening in the cold.
- 03
Females build a nest of rotting vegetation whose heat incubates the eggs.
— What sets it apart
It is the most traded crocodilian in the world, and the reason is that when the large caimans and the crocodiles were protected in the 1970s the leather industry moved onto it. Millions of skins a year, for decades, without the species collapsing: it breeds early, lays many eggs and occupies any pool. Much of the trade now comes from farms, and its story has served as a model — with contested results — for the idea that a species can be protected by making it economically useful.
