Welcome to Season 2, Episode 10 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series, where my baby crocodilian (spectacled caiman) surprises me by becoming an avid land hunter, forever changing the dynamic of my giant rainforest vivarium, Pantdora!
My new baby crocodilian (spectacled caiman) has officially learned how to crawl onto the land and hunt for the various creatures within my giant cloud rainforest vivarium, Pantdora. The rainforest ecosystem is forever changed, and I didn’t expect the little croc to ever be so land born, but it turns out, it is an avid hunter in both water and land. This is a story of how I discovered what my baby croc has been up to at night during his terrestrial sprees, what creatures he’s been eating, and the secrets he’s been hiding. Hope you enjoy Season 2, Episode 10 of my Ecosystem Vivarium Series.
My Baby Crocodile is Hunting Land Creatures in My Giant Rainforest Vivarium
This is my 1000-gallon cloud rainforest vivarium, I call Pantdora, a biological project of mine for the study of an ecosystem with numerous creatures, plants, and fungi living within it, and my most recent addition, a baby crocodilian spectacled caiman, whom I was under the impression would just live in the waters, eating the random insects falling into his pond, but, boy, was I wrong.
For one night, I spotted this. Oh man! Our croc had discovered life on land, as well as the multitude of living creatures sharing his new domain. So now you ask: What happens when a baby croc breaks free of the waters and learns it has the freedom to hunt creatures on land? Well, as I found out, the events that ensued involved predation, disappearances, death, and an angry territorial swarm of ants. Welcome to the AntsCanada Ant Channel.
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I should have guessed when I began spotting ground vegetation in the rainforest looking more flattened in appearance, like something large had trampled on them. I thought maybe the resident sun skinks or tree frogs had gotten a bit rowdy while hunting, but little did I know, something stressful was ahead this week, especially before stumbling across our croc’s biggest secret he was hiding, here in this rainforest. But for now, I was working on training.
[Vocal gator sound]
I dropped the roach in and began to make the simulated baby croc sound. The purpose of this was to have him associate me and the sound with food, my attempt to begin the bonding process with him, to tame him out for whenever I would have to move him into his future swamp vivarium, and then eventually my 60 ft outdoor pond when fully grown. His first interaction with me was a bit traumatic for both him and I, so it was time to start a fresh new page in our relationship. By the way, he needs a name so please kindly vote by hitting LIKE on the post under the pinned comment of this video, with the name you feel would best suit our new caiman here, all names suggested by you, the AC Family.
The roach continued to move and struggle, flipping itself over, which suddenly caught the attention of our croc. The roach remained still, sensing it was in danger.
Bam! It was no use, the caiman did a lightning-fast side lunge death roll and secured the newly caught roach into his mouth. Wow! That was awesome! It was his first time openly eating in broad daylight with me standing around… ok, fine: me being a total creeper! But I was just so happy our baby caiman was accepting my food gifts after just the third day, and settling happily into his brand new home. Now I had no idea at the time, but it turns out, our caiman here was actually much more acquainted with his home than I ever realized and had already taken matters into his own jaws.
But as exciting as having a new baby croc in our rainforest was, I had some bad news to share.
No! Our new weaver ant queen, who was tending to a batch of eggs, had completely disappeared. Guess something ate her. How sad! I was so looking forward to having an active colony of weaver ants living in our rainforest, especially to inhabit the trees of Pantdora’s newest expansion attachment, our new canopy vivarium, which was still under construction. It was such a tragic loss, but then, a sudden movement of green caught my eye, off to the side. Hey, what’s that?
No way! A green weaver ant queen was crawling on the glass, on the outside of the vivarium wanting to get in. I swear, this had to be some divine intervention by the ant gods or something! How amazing! And guess what? That’s not all. I spotted another on the glass, and another one on my window. I began to realize that perhaps now would be a great time to go looking outside for more queens, as their nuptial flight was clearly happening!
And as I left to attempt catching more queens, an Empress was enjoying her new catch, feeding a developing future empire inside her. Empress Emeralda, a female marbled mantis, devoured her third roach in the past 24 hrs, truly a hungry pregnant momma! She had not too long ago mated with her Emperor, Emperor Silverio, who was now enjoying retirement on my windowsill, spending his remaining days eating crickets and watching the traffic go by.
One thing I find amazing is how she eats the exoskeleton of the roach, as well. It would be like us eating the meat and the shell of a lobster. Watching our Empress masterfully handle the roach with her specialized spiny arms, reminded me how supremely designed praying mantises were for predation, so well designed that mantises date back to at least 145.5 million years ago, older than when T-Rex roamed the Earth. I made sure to keep feeding her as much as she was willing to accept, so she had enough nourishment to produce as many egg sacs or more technically known as oothecas, as possible, so the mantis babies would one day inhabit Pantdora and the new canopy vivarium, as one of the ecosystem’s top predators in our rainforest.
But speaking of top predators in the rainforest, a whole other ancient play of predators and prey replays every night, and this night at first appeared to be like any ordinary Pantdoran night, but as I soon discovered, it wasn’t.
The cloud mists danced upon the thick vegetation blanketing the lands in life-bringing humidity.
And then something surprising caught my eye. Hey! One of the geckoes had emerged, but there was something new and very exciting about this particular gecko. It was a juvenile, smaller than the adults I had placed in many months ago, like this adult gecko feeding on a cricket. Turns out, this younger gecko was a Pantdoran-born native! Yay! The geckoes were finally successfully breeding in our vivarium, and I guess the youngsters are just really good at hiding from me. That was awesome, but AC Family, there were more secrets to discover on this night. Let’s move on.
The orange carpenter ants were on the night prowl scavenging the forest. I have been spotting foragers from this colony more and more, which to me meant they were doing quite well at finding the necessary food they needed within our forest. It was awesome to know Pantdora was the perfect environment for them to thrive. Their nest was somewhere deep in the driftwood. Their colonies can get quite big, so I was excited to see them continue to do well in our rainforest.
I then spotted a baby huntsman. Wow! These spiderlings are quite big now, just under an inch in leg span. They were born from Lady Death Strike, our adult huntsman, who was also running around somewhere. In a few months, this spider, if it survives, will have a leg span of 5 or 6 inches.
A coconut rhino beetle had emerged into the humid night air. One thing I learned from one of you beetle enthusiasts is that the rhino beetles I placed in here were all female. In this rhino beetle species, even the females have horns, just smaller horns. It looks like this female might be releasing pheromones to attract a male. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for one. Other beetle species had also emerged to feed on vegetation.
But the most prominent insects to emerge at night were the prey creatures. Crickets were out, like this female who was busy laying her eggs into the soils, and this cricket busy eating some sun skink poop. And of course, the most abundant prey critters of our forest, the roaches. These forest roaches were members of nature’s cleanup crew, consuming dead and decaying vegetation, helping to return vital nutrients to the soils. They had a special affinity for the asparagus ferns.
But as I was scanning the asparagus ferns, my jaw dropped when I spotted the craziest surprise, completely out of left field, or should I say “right pond”. A tail! No way! You have got to be kidding me! The caiman had wandered onto land! I don’t know why this was a surprise, as I did know crocodilians are amphibious, but I didn’t expect our baby croc to have wandered this far out onto land. I mean, check out how far it had to crawl to get here. It crawled from here, all the way across that vegetation, and all the way from the pond in that darkness. It had moved quite the distance, three-quarters down to the other end of the vivarium. This baby croc of ours was full of surprises and had one thing on its mind. It had come here to hunt. It seemed to instinctively know that this toxic millipede was not edible. Our caiman was after something larger, and quite conveniently it was moving just up above him and getting quite close.
Up high in the canopy, the resident tree frogs had emerged to catch their night’s worth of insects.
There were five tree frogs in our rainforest, including two which have names. Kermit, a male, whom I always spot in a spiderman pose hanging from the vines, and his long-time love Miss Piggie, who is now so fat, probably developing eggs inside her for mating! You see, I know it’s their breeding season right now, because when all the lights are off, I hear the males croaking. Listen! Kermit here is a bit shy to sing on camera, but one of these days I’ll catch him or one of the other males singing, and find a frog egg mass in our pond. But for now, I would just have to allow the tree frogs to do their thing in private.
But on the topic of privacy, I was just about to witness for the very first time, a private ritual for a certain baby croc. A young roach up in the asparagus ferns had lost its footing and fell nearby and began to make its way closer to the caiman, who had all the patience in the world to wait for food to come within snapping distance.
The roach scuttled by, and bam! Captured! Woah! Those are some pretty fast reflexes. It was also quite amazing to know that our croc was quite the avid land hunter! I wanted to see how the caiman would swallow this roach, because prior to this, I had only watched the croc feed in water, and never got to watch the swallowing process. But this time, I could now see how the roach makes its way from in the mouth to its belly, and AC Family, this was such a cool thing to watch! Check this out.
So for the first eight seemingly long minutes, the caiman did nothing but hold the roach in its mouth. Soil creatures attracted by the smell of the dying roach, were scurrying all around it as you can see in this time-lapse. Then suddenly, it began to slowly move back and began working with the roach in its mouth. It looked like the caiman was crushing the roach further, just to make sure it was dead and softer for the swallowing process. The roach was indeed still alive and struggled as the caiman continued to chomp. Then to my surprise, the caiman totally threw the roach. What?! It lay on the ground completely motionless. When the caiman decided the roach was indeed dead, it picked up the roach and began to swallow, which surprisingly caused the roach, which was still alive, to struggle some more. So, the caiman kept chomping, until finally, it began to swallow the roach down. Actually, nope. Back out. Chomp, chomp, chomp some more, and then, finally it opened up its throat and scarfed the whole piece down. Wow! How cool! The caiman lay there using its throat muscles to move the large prey down its esophagus. Unlike in snakes and lizards, it looked like our caiman didn’t twist and curl to actively assist in moving the food down. It just focused on pushing the food straight down into its belly. And then, surprisingly it did this. It pointed its nose to the ground and began biting the earth? Or cleaning its jaws on the ground? Any crocodilian experts care to shed light on what it’s doing here? And just like that, our baby caiman had consumed a full meal it had fully caught on land. What a sight!
Moments later, I caught the croc further at the other end of the vivarium, enjoying the hydrating mists of his new home. He looked calm and relaxed here. I wished I could know what our caiman was thinking. It was clear that he was a very intelligent animal. I wished he knew how much we loved him, how he didn’t have to worry about going hungry ever again in his life, and could understand all the exciting domains we had lined up for him to live in as he would grow. But right now, I smiled, watching our gentle predator rest his head onto the pillowy moss, as the tree frogs serenaded him from the moonlit night sky above.
Then out of nowhere, something began to tickle him. It was moving on his face. The smell of the eaten roach began to attract a visitor that crawled into his mouth. It was a dwarf ant, and they began appearing around our caiman’s face. It bothered the caiman a bit, getting in his eyes. I began to worry. Should I be concerned? I knew if the ants were causing pain and stinging the croc, he’d quite easily just move away, but he wasn’t. He was just kind of putting up with them at the moment. Crocodilian skin is interesting in that it is considered a dermal exoskeleton, consisting of really tough bony scale-like structures known as osteoderms. The dwarf ants don’t have a stinger strong enough to hurt me when I have my hands in the vivarium, so I assumed they surely weren’t going to hurt our caiman. They were just a nuisance, and it looked like the ants were beginning to swarm, but I trusted our caiman would simply move away if they became too problematic. But this is where things took a terrifying turn.
The next day, I looked into Aqua Noctis. Hmmm… I could usually spot his whereabouts in the pond by looking underwater, but today I couldn’t see his body from the front nor from the side. I scanned the surface of the pond, but nothing. He wasn’t in his usual spot under the rock shelf, either. I instantly went into panic mode and began scouring the forest floor for his whereabouts. Surely, he couldn’t have been attacked and devoured by dwarf ants the night before, could he? The thought left a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, and my heart began to race. With my endoscopic camera, I decided to look deep into the mossy hill adjacent to the pond. I could see nothing. I then peeked into the dark areas under the driftwood, and all I could spot were millipedes and roaches. Could he have buried himself underground? Do caimans even do that? I resolved to check the vivarium in the night when he would be active again, if ever.
The instant the sun began to set, I approached Aqua Noctis and looked inside, fearful of whom I might not see in the waters. I scanned the pond’s surface. Oh, thank God! There he was, safe and chilling in the pond. Ahhh! Why must this be so stressful? He looked at me, probably wondering why I was looking so freaked out, or maybe expecting some food. But all I was wondering now was, where on earth had he gone all day? Now, AC Family, you guys won’t believe this.
Later that night, I watched the caiman hanging out by the rock bank. I expected to see him hunt for food again on land. When he was ready, he eventually crawled up the rock bank, and it was then that I decided, hey, why not try another bonding feeding, this time on land?
[Vocal gator sound]
I did the sound and handed him a roach, which he ignored. I tried again, but no, he was still not comfortable feeding from my tweezers on land. OK, no problem, my guy. But as I watched him resting along the pond’s bank, he showed me something about Pantdora I completely had no idea about. The caiman slipped into the water and began to swim away towards the back. Hey, where’s he going? Wait a minute. I looked towards the area where the caiman had gone, and lo and behold, this is what I saw. OMG! No way!
There was a whole secret lagoon back here, and there our caiman was, chilling in what I guessed was now his official bedroom. How cool! It looked pretty cozy back there, and upon further inspection, there was an even larger entrance into this secret lagoon bedroom underwater. He could swim through here, or choose to crawl along the top of the rock shelving. I completely didn’t know such a space existed. I just assumed this back space was totally filled up with rock shelving or something, but it was cool to see that our croc had a private place to hang out and sleep during the day.
A few nights later, I smiled when I caught the caiman sleeping against the glass with a super full tummy. Look at that resting, smiling face. It was at this moment when I realized that our caiman would be alright in Pantdora, that he naturally had the skills to survive in these sometimes hostile lands. Every night, I continued to spot our caiman coming to the same spot in the moss under the giant driftwood stump, to moon gaze after a night of hunting through the ferns. It made me feel a deep sense of gratitude that I had the opportunity to witness such beautiful scenes that happen out in nature all the time, in secret, away from human eyes. That was, after all, the whole purpose of creating Pantdora. I also learned once again that nature has a way of defying human expectations, breaking free of limiting barriers, and in a very Jurassic Park-type manner, finding a way. Upon further research, I learned that caiman babies do indeed perform a lot of hunting for prey on land. I guess our caiman was too hungry to simply wait for the insects to come to him, so he instinctively crawled onto land to begin hunting. At this age, they specialize in eating insects, but by the time our caiman gets big enough to pose a danger to our tree frogs or sun skinks, I expect he’ll be all settled into our future swamp vivarium. But for now, it was clear he was happy in our rainforest, with all its tropical, biological glory.
Emperor Silverio, our male mantis, took his final breath of air this week and sadly passed away. I took his body, which was already covered in flies, and placed it into Pantdora to become one with our ecosystem. The soil creatures instantly began to come around, including springtails and dwarf ants. It wasn’t long before I spotted a dwarf ant trail coming to and from the mantis. Our male mantis would soon become one with the soils, which would eventually become the plants, eaten by the insects, which would one day feed his future babies. I expect the Empress to lay her egg sacs any day now. What an incredible life cycle!
I also spotted that our sun skinks had found some new bedrooms of their own. They had learned to bury themselves into the moss every afternoon, instead of the soils, when they retreated to sleep. This was Drake drifting off to bed in the moss, and here was Smaug, all stuffed up behind the moist mossy layer behind the rock wall! I guess it’s safe to say, Smaug was the one who ate our weaver ant queen… Oh yeah, and speaking of which, I almost forgot.
I have to show you my epic catch from the weaver ant queen search outside. I’d say I was pretty successful on my hunt, because have a look at this! AC Family, behold, our new epic weaver ant queen sorority and their collective new brood!
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