Gharial

Lore & Background

The oldest known depictions of the gharial are about 4,000 years old and were found in the Indus Valley. Hindus regard it as the vehicle of the river deity Gaṅgā. Local people living near rivers attributed mystical and healing powers to the gharial, and used some of its body parts as ingredients of indigenous medicine.

Reader's Guide

The gharial is the most thoroughly aquatic crocodilian, and leaves the water only for basking and building nests on moist sandbanks. Adults mate at the end of the cold season. Females congregate in spring to dig nests, in which they lay 20–95 eggs. They guard the nests and the young, which hatch before the onset of the monsoon.

The hatchlings stay and forage in shallow water during their first year, but move to sites with deeper water as they grow. The wild gharial population has declined drastically since the 1930s and is limited to only 2% of its historical range today. Conservation programmes initiated in India and Nepal focused on reintroducing captive-bred gharials since the early 1980s. Loss of habitat because of sand mining and conversion to agriculture, depletion of fish resources and detrimental fishing methods continue to threaten the population. It has been listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2007.

Did You Know?

• The gharial is the only living crocodilian with visible sexual dimorphism, as mature males develop a hollow bulbous nasal protuberance at the tip of the snout.
• The family Gavialidae includes both the gharial and the false gharial (Tomistoma schlegelii).
• The heaviest recorded male gharial weighed 1,000 kg.