Peacock Bass And Pirhanas

[Buckeye]

Originally Posted by joshuaream

No, it's a slimy, stinky little rock sucker (mouth on the bottom, you usually spear them in rocky feeder creeks.)

Good old Mapanare, one of my favorite sugar cane fields in Carabobo is just full of them... The scary thing is that there are probably 10 laying perfectly still for everyone I actually see. We see a decent number of rattle snakes and coral snakes on the desert sites in Falcon and Zulia. My brother-in-law keeps a couple of very well fed anacondas in ponds at one of the farms, the biggest was about 15 feet long last time I saw it and eats a small chiguirre every other of month (plus turtles, caimans, etc that it catches.) They used to be common, but they are rare on the llanos nowadays.

Here are a couple of pelts I peeled off some fresh road kill many years ago.

Pretty cool!
Ocelots or Fishing cats?


Thanks for the pics Midlandman, I hear Piranha are yummy, better than bluegills?

[joshuaream]

Buckeye,

The larger one is a small common Ocelot, the smaller one is a Margay. Ocelots get up to 30 or 40 pounds and can kill goats, deer, dogs, etc. Margays are specialized tree cats that rarely weigh more than 5 to 10 pounds. They can walk head first down a tree vs climbing down backwards like most cats need to.

The good thing is that since rabbits were introduced and spread like they did in Australia, all of these little cat species have rebounded since they have a stable food source.

Joshua