The yacare caiman, which is also commonly know as the jacare caiman, paraguayan caiman, piranha caiman, red caiman and southern spectacled caiman. Generally eating fish snails and occasionally snakes, they have been known to take Capybara. When small they are predated by birds such as storks.

In the 1980s they were destined for extinction, due to overhunting (their hide is more usable than other species. Brazil banned their hunting in 1992, and by 2013 they had largely recovered, with around 10 million in the Pantanal alone.

This ICUN listed this species as least concern in 1996. It has been listed as threatened in the US fish and wildlife services since 2000. As of 2010 CITES lists it as appendix 2 species on CITES (allows some trade – but is meant to come with some controls, which mean that the harvesting remains sustainable, and does not push the species towards extinction). The current estimates are around 200,000 populations size in the wild.