News Archive

A 10-year-old male Cuban crocodile at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) has died.

Animal keeper Kyle Miller leaps into his experience caring for Cuban crocodiles!

It's nesting season. In April, the Reptile Discovery Center's Cuban crocodile Blanche built up a large mound nest. She constructed the nest by kicking up the mulch in the exhibit into a central location.

In March, female Cuban crocodile Rose underwent a series of tests to determine if she is still capable of producing healthy eggs. It all began with an egg — a perfectly smooth, white, oval-shaped, normally-sized egg — that Rose laid two months early. Nesting season for Cuban crocodiles does not...

The Reptile Discovery Center’s research on Cuban crocodiles continues! Currently, the team is listening for and recording vocalizations.

Keepers at the Reptile Discovery Center, including animal keeper Lauren Augustine, are upholding that proud tradition with ground-breaking research on social behavior, reproduction and play in a species not typically associated with any of those words: a crocodile.

Breeding season for our Cuban crocodiles ended in March, but staff continue to train the crocodiles to shift off exhibit. The hope is that when a keeper calls aloud for the crocs to shift, all of them will walk to the holding area in the back of their exhibit. Once they are in the holding, the doors...

Cuban crocodile breeding season started in December at the Reptile Discovery Center. This usually means we see some aggressive behaviors between our two males. Our males are separated in different enclosures and are never in the same space, but they can still see each other. They will signal their...

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...