The gharial is named for the pot-shaped bulb on a male's nose
Adult male gharials grow a hollow knob at the tip of their snouts shaped like a ghara, a clay pot, and use it to make a hiss audible 75 metres away. No other living crocodilian shows such obvious differences between the sexes. This slender-jawed fish hunter now survives in only a sliver of its old range.
The gharial ranks among the longest crocodilians, males reaching 6 metres and females up to about 4.5, yet it is lightly built for its length. Its snout is long and narrow, lined with 110 sharp interlocking teeth, ideal for snapping fish. It is the most aquatic of all crocodilians, leaving the river only to bask and to nest on moist sandbanks, where females lay 20 to 95 eggs and guard the young.
Its lineage is old and regional. Fossils from the Sivalik Hills and the Narmada valley show it evolved in the northern Indian subcontinent, and relatives once spread as far as Java along river routes. Genetic studies indicate it split from the false gharial of Southeast Asia about 38 million years ago. Depictions from the Indus Valley are around 4,000 years old, and Hindus regard it as the mount of the river goddess Ganga.
Its range once ran from the Indus in Pakistan to the Irrawaddy in Myanmar. By 1976 only about 2 percent remained, with fewer than 200 animals thought to survive, and it has vanished from Bhutan and Myanmar. Sand mining, farming along riverbanks, dwindling fish and harmful fishing methods keep it listed as critically endangered.
Since the early 1980s India and Nepal have released captive-bred gharials to bolster wild numbers, and by 2019 the population was estimated at no more than 900, including about 600 mature adults. In a hopeful sign, fishermen reported gharials in Pakistan's Sutlej River in 2023, prompting a 70-kilometre sanctuary and a survey that found 27 animals and two breeding sites.
Source: Gharial
