Black Caiman Alligator

Melanosuchus niger

Status: Conservation Dependant. In the 1970s, the Black Caiman Alligator was classified as Endangered, but it has since moved to CD, meaning that while the numbers have recovered, its populations are still highly dependent upon active management of resources and enforcement of hunting, and the ecological niche that it once filled has been taken over by faster reproducing spectacled caimans. It was once a very commonly hunted species, desired for the uniquely marked black skin.

Columbian folklore has a tale about El Hombre Caimán ("The Alligator Man") who lives on the banks of the Magdelena River. El Hombre Caimán was once a human fisherman by the name of Montenegro. The fisherman enjoyed spying upon women bathing in the streams, and so he engaged the help of a shaman, who gave him two potions: one that shifted him into an alligator, and a second that returned him to human shape. The second potion required the assistance of a friend, since he did not have the dexterity to manage it in the form of an alligator.

After enjoying this for some time, there came an occasion when he returned from a jaunt to his friend, who clumsily opened the bottle. The liquid splashed across Montenegro's head and torso, which resumed man-form, but this left his lower half trapped as an alligator.

Horrified at what he had become, shunned and hunted by his neighbors, he fled into the river, and eventually out beyond the mouth of the river to the sea.

Statues and murals of El Hombre Caimán can be found in the region.

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