Gharial: Say, "Teeth!"

Armed with around a hundred teeth, which it seems to like to display, as if on a visit to the dentist’s, this crocodilian reptile inspires fear in people traveling by foot along certain large rivers in the Indian subcontinent. Human remains and jewellery found in their stomachs substantiate this fear.

However, the gharial has to come out of the water and bask in the sun to keep its body temperature constant. Since it has no sweat glands, it has to keep its mouth open to cool down. And no… it prefers fish, rarely attacking humans. So, how did the human remains come to be found in its stomach? It has been established that the gharial scavenges on corpses tipped over into rivers because of funeral practices in such regions.

The gharial uses its flat paddle-shaped, muscular tail to propel itself with great speed for chasing schools of fish. Its long, thin and streamlined jaws offer least resistance to the water, even allowing its movement sideways.

Another effective ploy it uses is to wait motionlessly with its jaws open in the fast current, for a fish to swim by and when it does, the jaws snap shut, trapping the prey with interlocking, razor-sharp teeth.

After catching the fish, the gharial raises its head above the water and takes care to toss it - like you would an omelette - so that it goes in, head first!

Male gharials are territorial, laying claim to their patch by slapping their snouts on the water. A dominant male has a harem of females during the breeding season from November to January.

During the nesting season, from March to May, the female crawls about 16 feet on to a dry sandbank to dig its nest where she lays up to 50 large eggs and then covers them up with sand in an attempt to keep them out of bounds of predators as well as to maintain them at constant temperature.

When the eggs hatch in about 83 to 94 days, the mother stands guard until the hatchlings are ready to enter the water on their own, as she cannot carry them in her mouth due to the unusual shape of her jaw and the rows of sharp teeth.

Hunted for its beautiful skin, it is not only hunters and poachers who are a threat to the gharial’s existence. Another threat is the damming of rivers, which floods the nesting banks where females lay their eggs.

At a population of less than 3000 in the wild and in captivity, the gharial is an endangered species. However, thanks to the full protection the gharial has been given since the 1970s, there are now nine special reserves in India, concentrating on artificial hatching. Hatchlings raised in captivity are later released in protected areas.

Copyright © 2007 Noël Gama
www.noelgama.com