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Ballpaddict View Profile |
Caiman, any tips?
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| 04/14/07 08:59pm |
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Ballpaddict View Profile |
Message To: Ballpaddict In reference to Message Id: 1246525 Caiman, any tips?
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| 04/14/07 09:50pm |
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Sabretooth View Profile |
Message To: Ballpaddict In reference to Message Id: 1246588 Caiman, any tips?
As for their disposition...If the caiman are frequently handled at a young age they MAY become a bit more accepting to handleing, but far from docile so dont let your guard down for a second... they will never be tamed. Make sure to feed them using long tongs of some type, so they dont associate hands and fingers with being fed. They will also recognize faces. The bites even from a juvi can be pretty severe, expect stitches if a small one latches on to you, expect missing digets/limbs from an adult. Even with their jaws tied their protruding upper jaw teeth are still capable of tearing through your skin. Thats all I know for now, good luck and keep up the research! |
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| 04/14/07 10:27pm |
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Ballpaddict View Profile |
Message To: Sabretooth In reference to Message Id: 1246655 Caiman, any tips?
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| 04/14/07 10:58pm |
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Sabretooth View Profile |
Message To: Ballpaddict In reference to Message Id: 1246701 Caiman, any tips?
http://crocodilian.com/ http://crocodilian.com/paleosuchus/ ..the more info the better, so just keep looking around!! An adult dwarf caiman can rip off a child’s/teen’s arm...and lacerate and adults arm beyond all recognition or bite off a hand (like captain hook) :) the trick is not to get bitten, just be carefull...expect to lose your arm that way you will give the animal its due respect and make more responsible decisions around it. |
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| 04/15/07 02:07pm |
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Caiman12003 View Profile |
Message To: Sabretooth In reference to Message Id: 1246655 Caiman, any tips?
Spectacled Caimans are shy animals. They should never, ever be handled when they are young! You must win their trust. You can only do that if they are in a large enclosure where they can choose to hide from you or come to you to be fed. It will take several months to win that trust by the males. The males are the easiest to deal with, despite their huge size. The females are super-shy and skitterish. They will never tame and should never be imposed on by you in any way. When they want to be fed they will come to you, but be careful! They can be overly enthusiastic eaters, virtually diving at you for the food. The males get a little too exited when they see you coming with the food, but will quickly calm down after getting a couple of mouthfulls. Once the males trust you they will be very easy to deal with as long as you NEVER, EVER try to intimidate them! They must think that they did what you wanted them to do as being their own choice. While you must always be somewhat carefull, especially around their home pond, they will be very tolerant of you for the most part, They will not be looking to bite at every moment! In fact, once they understand that you are a "good guy" they usually try to be very carefull not to bite you when you feeding them. Their huge heads, however, make it difficult for them to judge where the tongs end and your hand begins so you still have to be very careful because they can do enormous damage without even intending to. The females, under my conditions, never, ever try to bite. I can even get into the ponds with the females to clean the pond filters, without ever paying any attention to them because they will never bite. They are just too shy. I wait until the males are out of the enclosure, or at least basking outside the pond, before getting into their ponds to clean their filters. The main problem is simply to keep the males separated from the other males and the females separated from the other females. They will fight if they come into contact with each other. I’ve had to break up a fight between 6’ "Panama" and 6 1/2" "Louie". Neither one had any problem with my intervention. I literally dragged "Panama" by the tail out of the enclosure, so as to end the conflict, but only after about 20 minutes of desperate work trying to keep them apart. I was standing between two raging caimans, yet they never even considered attacking me even though I was using extreme physical efforts using a big wooden stick pushing "Louie" away from "Panama". This was not the first time this happened. It happened once before, a few years ago when my wife was still alive. Two big male caimans had latched onto each other in a vicious battle. Me and my wife literally jumped into the fray and pulled them apart and I dragged one by the tail back into his enclosure. He never even looked at me! No aggression to me or my wife, whatsoever. Our only precaution was to make sure we stayed away from the snapping jaws that were trying to bite each other, not us. Caimans are alpha predators. Even a single unnecesary act of intimidation by you will set back your efforts to tame the animal by many, many months. They must be allowed to choose to trust you. Nothing else will work. Once they tame down you must continue to treat them with respect. Never forget that they are alpha predators. You must always be on your best behaviour. Be a "nice guy" and they will be "nice guys". Once you master that, you will discover that they make much, much better pets than American Alligators! |
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| 05/19/07 03:14pm |
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Caiman12003 View Profile |
Message To: Caiman12003 In reference to Message Id: 1286896 Caiman, any tips?
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| 05/19/07 03:21pm |
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Simbaah View Profile |
Message To: Caiman12003 In reference to Message Id: 1286900 Caiman, any tips?
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| 05/20/07 06:46pm |
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Simbaah View Profile |
Message To: Simbaah In reference to Message Id: 1288172 Caiman, any tips?
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| 05/20/07 06:56pm |
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Caiman12003 View Profile |
Message To: Simbaah In reference to Message Id: 1288184 Caiman, any tips?
Perhaps you are right about dwarf caiman personalities, but I have my doubts. The general beliefs about Spectacled Caimans are similar to your beliefs about Dwarf Caimans, but my experience (34 years) is different. That is because my crocs apparently have more freedom of movement than most keepers permit. They interact with me. They don’t view themselves as prisoners. They will request to come out of their large enclosures by banging on the glass sliding doors with their heads. A male will then be allowed to walk around my living room and challenge the other males through the glass sliding doors to their enclosures. During this "walkabout", I often touch them, and in the case of 6’ long "Panama", many people have petted him, even picking up his feet to examine the pads between his toes. Panama will usually give a clear signal by tensing up if he is annoyed by the petting, at which point I don’t let anyone, including myself, to pet him. This relative tameness does not come about easily, of course. It takes a lot of patience and requires the keeper to always keep in mind a deep respect for the croc and never, ever try anything that smacks of intimidation! That’s a sure way to make an enemy with very big jaws and big teeth! One more note: the caiman enclosures are not completely internally separated. The 4’ high walls between them leave a lot of space between those walls and the ceiling, permitting a lot of interaction in the form of bellowing contests, usually early in the morning and the 4’ high walls have metal doors at one end where they can look under the door and between the spaces at the sides of the closed swing doors at the other crocs on the other side of the door. They entertain themselves for hours at a time glaring at each other, either at these doors or at either side of the sliding glass doors between the enclosures and my living space. By the way, I posted a few photos. Any comments? |
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| 05/21/07 03:56pm |
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