Gharial

Gharial battle analysis

The gharial looks like a crocodile that has been stretched. Its snout is long and narrow, lined with about 110 fine interlocking teeth, and it works less like a crusher than like a pair of fishing tongs. Because a thin snout meets little resistance, the gharial can snap it sideways through the water to catch fish, and the teeth lock around slippery prey once they close.

That design comes with a clear cost. When researchers measured the bite of every living crocodilian species, the gharial came last in force. Its jaws cannot crush bone or hold down a struggling large mammal, and the long snout itself becomes a liability against a heavy biter. On land the gharial is slow, so it depends on the river for almost everything except basking and nesting.

In ABS terms the gharial is a crocodilian with most of the body armor but little of the crocodile's killing power. It keeps respectable Defense from its size and armored skin, moderate Agility in water, and a distinctive Special score for its sideways strike, needle-tooth trap and the male's buzzing ghara. Its Attack and Ferocity sit far below the alligator, Nile crocodile and saltwater crocodile, reflecting a specialist that wins against fish and loses most fights against large, heavy-jawed opponents.

Habitat & range

Gharials live in large, deep, flowing rivers with sandbanks on the northern Indian subcontinent. The main surviving populations are in India and Nepal, and the species now occupies only a small part of its former river range.

Diet & hunting

Adults eat mainly fish, which is why the species is also called the fish-eating crocodile. At Smithsonian's National Zoo gharials are fed a variety of fish. Young gharials take smaller aquatic animals. As a fish predator it is part of healthy river food webs.

Social life

Gharials bask together on sandbanks. Mature males display with the ghara and buzzing calls during the breeding season and compete for access to females. Hunting is solitary.

Conservation

The gharial has been listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN since 2007. Fewer than 900 mature individuals are thought to remain, and numbers have fallen by as much as 98% since the 1940s, driven by hunting for traditional medicine and major changes to river habitat. The Zoological Society of London's EDGE programme lists it as a priority species, and the IUCN Crocodile Specialist Group tracks its protected-area populations.

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