Seventh Night: Finding Caiman by the Gleam in their Eyes

July 3 - Evening

Caiman is probably terrified, but we let him go after a short time.

Tonight we are on a boat with a very bright spotlight to find caiman along the banks of the river, especially where there are vines hanging down into the water providing good hiding places. We find the caiman because their eyes shine red in the light, then we move closer to take data on their size and where they are located.

We take a small caiman on board with us, the biologist tapes up its nose, then we can touch them and take a picture. We also take data of course, measurements and weigh them, this caiman was pretty small, the largest we saw was 2.5 meters long. Caiman are another way to tell if the river is healthy. Lots of caiman means there is lots of fish to eat. Piranha, yum!

Victoria, a journalist from Scotland, gets ready to measure the caiman.