The posting by Juan Pozzi of a large black caiman on the Hunting Reports rest of the world rang a bell with me.

Many years ago I used to work on a cattle ranch in the Rupununni savannahs of what was then British Guiana but is now Guyana. There were many black caimen in the Rupununni River behind the ranch house. I shot a few but nothing big.

They ate our sheep and dogs all the time and ate a few Indians as well although not in the numbers Nile crocs did in my old hunting block in Tanzania.

Black caiman are more like an alligator than anything else. They have a wide jaw like an alligator and they roar like an alligator. Nile crocs can make noise but are relatively quiet.

One of the scariest moments I had in South America was with a black caiman. One day in the rainy season I rode a horse to a mountain called Darakaban to hunt deer. I spent the day climbing to the top of the mountain and when I started back it as already dark and there was no moon.

One the way back to the ranch was a deep stream leading into the Rupuni River. It was maybe 30 feet wide swollen with water and in the dark I missed the crossing. So I picked a place and let the horse enter the river, then slipped off the horse, and held onto the sadlle as he swam and pulled me across. If a horse gets his head under water they panic and frequently drown. Better to get your weight off their back.

The far bank was dark and when we got to it looked like there was no way to get out as the bank was steep and the bush was thick. The horse finally got his footing at the edge of the stream and just then we heard a caiman bellow about 30 meters down stream.

The horse panicked and lunged up the bank and into the bush and I pulled myself back on the saddle and stayed flat so as not to get scrapped of the saddle while the horse pushed his way up and into the open.

Caiman like Nile crocs spread out when the rains come and this guy had not been present there in the dry season. It still sends a bit of a thrill through me when I think about what might have happened if the horse had not found a way up the bank and we were left thrashing around in the stream on a picth black night with the caiman.

There was quite an aggressive black caiman about 12 feet long at the point where this stream entered the Rupununni river and I suspect it was the same animal. This caiman had several times surfaced in front of Indians trying to cross the River and forced them to move downstream to make another stream crossing.

I personally had no experience with black caiman taking people but a few years earlier one of our Indians had been taken by something while attemtping to cross another river. It could also have been a large anaconda as they were common too.

South America is the home to three large reptilians and three small ones. There are both American crocs and Orinoco crocs as well as black caimn and all three are rumoured to reach a length of 20 feet. Then there are spectacled caiman, yacare, and a dwarf caiman that lives in small streams.

Crocodillians - An Overview

Over the years, I too have read of 20' American crocodiles, Black Caiman and Orinoco's but no photos in my collection would indicate such lengths. On the other hand, I've seen a few honest 13' American alligators, so ....

Dear Nickudu,

I once stayed with the late Ross Allin at Silver Springs in Florida for a couple of weeks. He had pictures of himself feeding a very big alligator he used in shows. I think it was just over 15 feet but it was a captive animal and so would have been fed more often than a wild gator. There are definitely photos of Ross dressed like Tarzan feeding this animal. I think it was 15 foot 4 inches.

Just about all the big caiman, American crocs and especially Orinoco crocs were bumped off in the 50s so it will take a while to see how big they can really get. I suspect they do get as big as Nile crocs. They have the food. The Amazon basin has a greater variety of fish than the oceans.

The black caiman Juan Pozzi has posted looks like it could be a 14 footer but the picture is decieving because the animal is swollen from putrefication and the man with the gun is standing a long way behind. Couple that with a 35 mm lens and you can make a monster out of a miniature.

Ross Allen's Reptile Institute - How many times have you read that in the old herp books?
Yes, I can believe 15' a highly unlikely maximum for the american alligator but certainly not, the 18' record. Nor have I ever found anything one might hang his hat on, in establishing acutus, blk. caiman / Orinoco as going much over 15'. Australia's big crocodile culls took place at much the same time, with many a tale told, photograph taken and even a book or two written to give indication of specimens 18'and greater. Strange, is it not, the dearth of like information having emanated from similar activities in the Americas? It's as though most of the actual hunting here was done by the tribesmen.

I agree, Pozzi's black caiman does appear to be a possible 13'-14' but photos can be tricky, as you well know. It seems to me that all the photos presented there reflected efforts to "maximize" the trophy.

Personally, I doubt any western crocodilian approaches 20' and that Nile crocodiles can and do exceed the 15' mark on an infinitely more consistant basis. Despite this, there's still no definitive proof of any Nile specimen exceeding the decades old 19' 6" Semliki River record (assuming that to be valid). Salties? Well, that's another discussion, altogether.

Most of the people in South and Central America who hunted crocs were very poor and likely illiterate. I think none had cameras.

They killed enormous numbers without taking any notes or photos. I suppose the best source of length, of skins at least, would be the skin buyers who paid for them by the foot.

I am inclined to think the black caiman gets bigger than the alligator because he grows all year long wheras I suspect the growth of alligators slows down during cool periods of the year.