A Cayman and a Tortoise Become Unlikely Best Friends

Oh, baby. What's going on, everyone? We're hanging out here in Cayman Creek. All right, so here we are. It's Cayman Creek. We got Louis. We have not hung out with Louis in a while, so I wanted to just kind of give him some chicks here. See what he's up to. Come on. Oh gosh, I love Louis. He's such a good boy. Beautiful dwarf came in. This guy, I'm still looking for a girl. We need a girlfriend for him. I don't know if anybody out there knows of a female dwarf cayman that's looking to retire in South Florida here, but uh yeah, we're just looking checking things out. Look at that guy. How beautiful. Let's get another check.

Let's let's risk it. Oh, there we go. Come on. There you go. Good boy. Oh. Oh, we're going to go see you guys in a little bit. We got some rodents for you. Don't you worry. Oh, he's getting out of here. He sees those two big girls. Uh big boy and girl right there, Sunny and Sher. Hey Louie, don't be scared. They can't get you. I think that's interesting. Um I think I uh maybe he does like to kind of go off on his own because these two smooth fronts are quite larger than Louis and they probably would eat him up if he were in the same enclosure. That's why I like to keep

these guys separate. But uh right. Anyhow, look at him go. We'll get his attention over here again. Thank you to all our loyal Patreon members out there who have helped to create an amazing reptile community online with us. This week's shout out goes to LJ Mo. Louie, you want more? Come on. You know you do. Get back over here. He's such a cool Cayman, man. I mean, all the crocodilian in a real compact and tight little package. There you go. So fun. Now, these two, my goodness, they're getting closer and closer. I don't want to feed them from over the fence. We're going to go in there with them. We're going to check things out over

there. But I just love the way this guy behaves. He's so cute. What are you doing way up there, man? Are you going to risk it? Are you going for it? Oh my god. Somersault. Wow. That was wacky. Chinese box turtle don't care. Forget it, man. Wow. You don't care at all. You were like, "Yo, what's up? Got something to eat for that trick? Let's hook him up. Holy smokes. Come on. There's the food, dude. Just throw some out for everybody. Why not? The time of plenty. Thanks to our friends at Fluker hooking us up. Keeping these animals happy. Oh, get down there,

kid. Come on. What are you doing? Look down. Please look down. Thank you. That's what I like to see. They're just nibbling away. It's so much fun. I want to give Lou another check, though. What are we on? I think that's uh Was that chick number two or three? Hm. I don't know. Doesn't matter. Let's do it again. Louie. Hey, what are you doing? You're going to eat a chick? No, I don't think so. That's good, Lou. These guys are the funniest little turtles, man. So much personality in these little dudes. I absolutely love them. Pretty. Look at those beautiful eyes.

And then this really nice dark shell. And we should be finding babies here soon, guys, to be perfectly honest. Um, these are a species I have bred before and they are endangered. So, it's good that we have Whoa, I just freaked myself out. I put my hand in the bucket thinking I was getting fluker food and I felt the rat and I freaked out. So strange. I get more freaked out over furry things. Okay. Uhoh. Uh-huh. I knew it was only a matter of time. Only a matter of time before you know who shows up. Ladies and gentlemen, get over here. Let's

uh So many people on Instagram got so upset at me for feeding her like this. But watch this. We just place her in gently. Once she sees the food, I angle her head. We're not hurting her. She's clearly not hurting. She's clearly not starving. Okay, there you go. Get going. Let's do one more for this little dude. Uh-oh. There you go. Good boy. All right, now that's enough of you. That's enough of you. Please don't bite my leg. Are you going to climb? Don't bite my leg. You will bite my leg. I know you will. Even covered with Fluker Buffet Blend. You haven't even swallowed it yet.

So, I don't know. We got Cayman's eating. We've got turtles turtling. Ah, she just bit you guys. Lay off my friends, will you? Good grief. Let's go to the other side. Cuz I can only take so much of March. She's alone. I'm teasing. I love her. I love that scaly little gal. Chunky and scaly. Look at her. Sorry, Marge. That's all you get. See you later. Oh my gosh. Anyway, so we've been doing a lot of work here. We me. That's what I've been doing. I've just been weed whacking. We got that fixed. Um I've been pulling I pulled all the little uh what are they

called? Ferns from this area. I just like doing busy work. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Just kind of keeping things looking good over here. And uh you know, you got to do it. We can get in here now and weed whack, which is going to be good. All right, guys. Over here. Sunny share. You got to come over here now. Sunny share. Sunny and share. So, put your tiny hands in mine. There ain't no hill, no mountain we can't climb. Get over here. I said, "Boy, get over here." That's an old cartoon character. Fog horn leg horn. I'm old,

man. I ain't gonna hide it. Whatever. Let's hook these guys up with a rat a piece. Come here. Look at this. Look at this thing, baby. Good boy. Yes, you are. I love you. So cool. Now, where's our girl? Share. Oh, look at that sneaky share coming out of that tunnel. All right, baby. Sneaky share. Here she is. Little share bear. Woo. Share bear. Woo share. Look at that eye. No eye there. That's a good girl. She might be getting grab it again. Now I don't know. Am I going to keep these guys? What do you think? Should I hatch them or should I kind of, you know,

feed off the eggs this year. What should I do? We still have one smooth front left from last year. What should I do? I don't know. But let's investigate. Let's look at these guys. Look at the nucle scoots. Okay, these are the scoots right on the back of the neck. And uh boy, those nucals are really pronounced. And those are important to have because if you're a cayman living in jaguar country, well, it might help to have an armored body like this. All right. They are heavily osteoddermed, which are free floating bones inside of their skin all over their body, including their

belly, which is normally where the uh skin traders Oh, good grief. Which is normally where the skin traders actually get the skin to tan for leather from crocket lanes. They get it off the belly, gators, crocs. uh they are less osteodermed on the belly scoots scales so they're able to tan that whereas on these guys nope too much bone floating inside that skin. So these guys really aren't uh a valuable skin trade species which means luckily for them they're not endangered but they are amazing animals just little pitbulls if you ask me. They're the bulldogs of the

crocodilian world. The dwarf species, including Oh, what are you doing? You going to snap at your girlfriend? That's all I got for you, man. You get a rat a week, plus you get your croc pellets. Are you going to come over here? I ain't got nothing for you. It's just a hand. I hope you know the difference. She's looking quite rotunded, wouldn't you say? I think she's looking good. Yes, I do. What a special lady. So, couple weeks ago, you know, I came in here and I plucked out the weeds. I guess I got my weed whacker back so I can kind of do it properly, which is nice. And

uh while we're in here, we're going to check in on some of the uh tortoises that I have in here in a moment, but for now, I just wanted to kind of interact with these two. Look at You know, it's neat. He sees that I don't have any more food, so he's kind of leaving me alone, which is interesting. You know, I think that's kind of neat. I will say this, it looks like it might be uh getting close to time for a water change, a cleanout in Cayman Creek. So, what I'll do is I'll probably set up the uh power washer here

in the next week or so. And as this um system is actually running, I'll start at the wet land and I'll just spray while it's running to try and pull all of that debris down into the lower pit into the lower puddle here pond. And then we can kind of use our sump pump, suck it on out, get the water put over there onto that giant bamboo, which hopefully will take off really, really soon. And um that'll be nice. But we have all these beautiful fish that we got to account for as well. So I might have to set up our aquacape tub, our flexible and portable tub,

and get as many fish as I can into that with some of the pond water. And then we will just drain it, spray it, clean it, and uh start over again. But look at all these babies. This has been an incredible habitat uh and fishery to be honest. There's so many little baby um convict cichlids and blue aacara. I'm going to dunk you guys for a second. So, you can really see how there's so many of these fish right now. And it's awesome. I love seeing them. They have been the most prolific more than the African cichlids. These uh South American cichlids are really cool. Meanwhile, she's going to retreat. Oh, something concerned her a little

bit. But you can see we have a lot of debris. And this had this enclosure has not been or this water system ecosystem has not been cleaned out in years since it was built in 2021, I think. So, that's amazing. Um it's really cool and it's lasted this long. You know, we have the um the what is it called? It's a mango tree providing shade. You see it's getting bigger. This is what I wanted. I wanted this to become more of a canopied enclosure. She's over here looking at me. I got to keep an eye on her. But yeah, I wanted this to become more canopied and

that's exactly what's been happening. So, we've got the fishtail palm. We've got the mango tree which is only going to be bigger. Our gumbo limbo tree. Uh another fish tail. So, that's good news. Oh, there goes a basilisk. Let's go look now for that. Here's one of our fair eye doing exactly what fair I like to do. I'm going to pluck this just maybe not. Might be a little too much for me here at the moment with one hand. Oh yeah, that's not happening. But we'll trim it. But anyway, let's look at our fair eye. They have been loving this enclosure. And you can see,

look at this. Now, now watch my dig down. and you dig down nice and moist and it's a nice little microclimate for them. That's exactly what these tortoises love. And then when we get rain, they get super duper active. They'll come out. They'll eat all these weeds. I've not been um providing supplemental food for them because they have a lot to eat here. They've got a lot of Look at this. They've got a lot of weeds. And as we know, weeds are broadleaf weeds are some of the best things you can feed these animals. Let me see. I don't know what kind of mood this critter

is in. I don't know if they like this stuff. Let's see. Let me just see if they're interested in anything like that. But who knows? You can see there is some evidence sticking out of its beak, out of its mouth at the moment. I know they love this species here, this creeping little thing. I was going to grab some for our uh spider tortoises. So, that's kind of neat. But, uh yeah, it's just really, really good stuff. And I'm pretty stoked. I'm stoked on this animal and happy how they're behaving and interacting in this enclosure. They've got a water source and they've

got perfect habitat for them. So, putting them in here was a uh good idea. Very happy with that. Now, if we walk over here, oh, again, I love our little beautiful uh scychad living here. There's Sunny. All right, everybody's just chilling. Looking good. Move over here again. Another big alocacia, an elephant ear. Very happily growing. Uh, somebody did eat that. It could have been one of our fairy. They do enjoy it. Look at this. it isn't going to last long because the phara are very attracted to eating alicia which is interesting because it has a lot

of um oxalates. It's it's uh it's got kind of a interesting structure uh to the plant that most mammals I know can't eat. But our fairy right over here have no issue at all. Let's wander. Let's wander, friends. Wander in this direction. I told you we were going to hang out with some of these guys. And there's another one. These came from my friend from Louisiana. And uh my god, just awesome. So funny because the fairy actually have reverse pyramiding. They actually have this concavity in each scoot. So if you make a fair eyee pyramided, boy, you really screwed up. But

uh these guys are really cool. I love the designs that nature gave them on their forlims. And of course, they also call it the six-legged tortoise because of these large spurs coming out of their thighs. Now, you are a real true thirst uh spur thigh, aren't you? All right. So, again, lots of land area for the tortoises. They wander everywhere. We got our tree fern looking good. Wait, what are you doing? Oh, you see the bucket. You see the bucket, don't you? Yes, you do. You see that bucket? My god, look at that animal. I just love the dentition, seeing

each teeth and the variations in the teeth. You got your front teeth are designed to grip and hold on to something and then they pull them back to those crushing teeth down in the back. uh they are more kind of nubbed and those are for crushing shells of crustaceians and small turtles and so yeah that's pretty neat. Love it. All right. Okay. Moving along. Moving along. What do we got? I wanted to get over here because our naughty little Lego Hi Lego. She's living over here now because I'm worried about her drowning. She was keeps falling into the uh recreation pond. So, no Lego. You guys stay here now, little one. So,

she stays here and helps out with everybody. I am noticing things are getting kind of pulled up. So, it's possible she's starting to construct a nest, a female. And then let's go see this guy. Oh my gosh. Oh, okay. The elongated that was wandering the neighborhood. Look at that beautiful animal. It would be nice. We got to find a female now. Very good. Okay. How you like it, friends? That's what we got for you today. I hope you enjoyed today's video and I will see you guys again real soon. Don't forget to go to patreon.com/camchan and uh you know,

that's where you'll see more content and a live chat with me every Thursday at 400 p.m. Okay, everybody. so long. I will be seeing you soon. And uh don't forget, be good dads. See you.