News Archive

By: Lauren Augustine It's an exciting time of year at RDC! Our Cuban crocodiles have begun exhibiting breeding behaviors. In general the males will initiate courtship with a head slap. This involves the male making a very specific posture in the pool where his head is raised above the waterline, his...

By: Lauren Augustine During the first few months of their lives, our baby Cuban crocodiles are meticulously monitored to ensure they are growing properly. In addition getting an initial weight from them after they hatched, RDC keepers frequently weigh them each month to ensure they are eating and...

By Lauren Augustine Our baby Cuban crocodiles are one month old! They are feisty little additions to the Reptile Discovery Center. They eat a variety of food items, because a nutritionally balanced diet is essential for the long term health of our hatchlings. This the most susceptible stage of their...

Very exciting news! All five Cuban crocodile eggs hatched! Our first croc egg pipped on July 29. That means the hatchling began to break through the egg shell with a modified tooth called an egg tooth. Today the baby has fully emerged and looks great! Very Feisty! This egg was incubated in a...

By Lauren Augustine Remember those really important eggs we got back in May from Dorothy our 57-year-old Cuban crocodile? Well, we are now about half way through incubation. Five of the ten eggs are continuing to develop. We track development through a process called candling, this involves taking a...

By Lauren Augustine Summer has officially arrived in DC! And while visitors to the Zoo often flock to shade or the air conditioned buildings (like the Reptile Discovery Center), some animals are reveling in the heat—like our crocodiles. Crocodiles are ectothermic, meaning their body temperature is...

By Lauren Augustine I bet you didn't know that we train our crocodiles—that's right crocodiles can learn! We use operant conditioning techniques much like the mammal and bird keepers at the Zoo. There are a few reasons keepers at the Reptile Discovery Center use operant conditioning to train the...

By Lauren Augustine Today we collected the Holy Grail of crocodile eggs! Dorothy, our oldest Cuban crocodile, laid 24 eggs! Unlike our other two Cuban crocodile females, Dorothy digs a hole nest, making it difficult to find the eggs. If you remember from my first blog, our other two females build...

By Lauren Augustine Rose, one of our three female Cuban crocodiles started nesting last week, though we don't expect any to hatch. She is enormous! She used her back legs to kick all the mulch, leaf litter and dirt in the exhibit into a large mound for her nest. This morning she looked as though she...