Its diet primarily consists of aquatic animals, such as snails, and occasionally land vertebrates.

The yacare caiman was hunted heavily for its skin to use for leather in the 1980s, which caused its population to decrease significantly.

[8]: 7  Its specific name, yacare, comes from the word jacaré, which means "alligator" in Old Tupi and then assimilated into Portuguese.

[7] National Geographic has described young individuals as "look(ing) like nothing more than tiny, windblown seeds floating amid the rushes at the edge of a lagoon in Brazil's remote interior.

"[12] Based on a study of the growth of multiple specimens in the Pantanal from 1987 to 2013, both sexes are about 50 cm (20 in) SVL at age five.

[7] Dark marks are distributed across the body; most noticeably, its lower jaw is covered with three to five blotches.

[9]: 24  The species' diet consists of aquatic animals, such as snails and fish, and occasionally snakes.

[5] In July 1986, the stomach of a specimen in Bolivia was observed to be full of mud, along with small parts of eggshells that likely belonged to a caiman.

[6] Nests are constructed by the females, built in a mound shape using mud and rotting vegetation.

[14] Females usually protect nests during incubation, but do so less when the human hunting pressure is high, ultimately causing a lower hatching success rate.

[5] The range of the yacare caiman includes Argentina (north), Bolivia, Brazil (south), and Paraguay.

[14] In the 1980s, the species was "heading for oblivion" due to frequently being hunted for its skin;[12] hunters often went to water holes containing many yacare caimans and shot large numbers of them.

[12] Current threats of the yacare caiman include deforestation, tourism, construction of dams and seaports, and illegal hunting.