river banks. Mammalian prey mostly include common Amazonian species such as various monkeys, sloths, armadillos, pacas, agoutis, coatis, and capybaras. Large prey can include other species of caimans, deer, peccaries, tapirs, anacondas, giant otters, Amazon river dolphins and domestic animals including pigs, cattle, horses, and dogs. Although rare predations on cougars or even jaguars have been reported, very little evidence exists of such predation, and cats are likely to avoid ponds with large adult black caimans, suggesting that adults of this species are higher in the food chain than even the jaguar. Where capybara and white-lipped peccary herds are common, they are reportedly among the most common prey item for large adults. Evidence has suggested fairly large river turtles can be counted among the prey of adult black caimans, the bite force of which is apparently sufficient to shatter a turtle shell. Large males have even been observed to cannibalize other Black Caimans. Compared to the smaller caiman species, the black caiman more often hunts terrestrially at night, using its acute hearing and sight. As with all crocodilian species, their teeth are designed to grab but not chew, so they generally try to swallow their food whole after drowning or crushing it. Large prey that cannot be swallowed whole are often stored so that the flesh will rot enough to allow the caiman to take bites out of the flesh. Reproduction At the end of the dry season, females build a nest of soil and vegetation, which is about across and wide. They lay up to 65 eggs (though usually somewhere between 30 and 60), which hatch in about six weeks, at the beginning of the wet season, when newly flooded marshes provide ideal habitat for the juveniles once hatched. The eggs are quite large, averaging in weight. Unguarded clutches (when the mother goes off to hunt) are readily devoured by a wide array of animals, regularly including mammals such as South American coatis (Nasua nasua) or large rodents, egg-preying snakes and birds such as herons and vultures. Occasionally predators are caught and killed by the mother caiman. Hatching is said to occur between 42 and 90 days after the eggs are laid. It is well documented that, as with other crocodilians, caimans frequently move their young from the nest in their mouths after hatching (whence the erroneous belief that they eat their young), and transport them to a safe