Animalia > Chordata > Crocodylia > Alligatoridae > Melanosuchus > Melanosuchus niger

Melanosuchus niger (Black caiman)

Synonyms: Caiman niger

Wikipedia Abstract

The black caiman (Melanosuchus niger) is a large crocodilian and, along with the American alligator, is one of the biggest extant members of the family Alligatoridae and order Crocodilia. It is a carnivorous reptile that lives along slow-moving rivers, lakes, seasonally flooded savannas of the Amazon basin, and in other freshwater habitats of South America. It is a quite large species, growing to sizes of at least 5 m (16 ft) and possibly up to 6 m (20 ft) in length, which make it the biggest reptile in the Neotropical ecozone. As their name implies, the black caiman has a dark coloration, as an adult. In some individuals the dark coloration can appear almost black. However, they have grey to brown banding on the lower jaw. Juveniles have a more vibrant coloration compared to adults with p
View Wikipedia Record: Melanosuchus niger

Attributes

Egg Length [2]  2.677 inches (68 mm)
Egg Width [2]  1.575 inches (40 mm)
Gestation [2]  66 days
Litter Size [3]  55
Litters / Year [2]  1
Maximum Longevity [4]  15 years
Snout to Vent Length [2]  3.772 feet (115 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams
Adult Weight [2]  180.78 lbs (82.00 kg)
Birth Weight [2]  91 grams
Female Weight [2]  180.78 lbs (82.00 kg)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Prey / Diet

Myocastor coypus (nutria)[5]

Prey / Diet Overlap

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Herpetodiplostomum caimancola[6]
Mesodiplostomum gladiolum[6]
Proterodiplostomum longum[6]

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 3Herron, JC, Emmons, JE & CADLE, JE (1990). Observations on reproduction in the black caiman, Melanosuchus niger. J. Herpetology 24(3): 314-316
♦ 4de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 5Myocastor coypus, Charles A. Woods, Luis Contreras, Gale Willner-Chapman, and Howard P. Whidden, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 398, pp. 1-8 (1992)
♦ 6Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0