Animal · India, Nepal
Gharial
Gavialis gangeticus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The gharial is a long river crocodilian from India and Nepal, easy to recognise by its thin snout set with more than a hundred teeth. Those narrow jaws sweep sideways through the water to catch fish. It is one of the rarest large animals on Earth.
Picture credit: Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the gharial live?
Home: Deep, fast rivers with sandbanks.
In the wild it lives in these countries: India, Nepal.
Conservation status from the IUCN: critically endangered.
The short profile
Fully grown: males up to about 6 m long. It weighs about 160 kilograms. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
The gharial is the most water-loving of all crocodilians. Its legs are weak for such a heavy body, so on land it pushes itself along on its belly and never wanders far from the river. In the water it is quick and precise: the thin snout meets almost no resistance, and a sideways sweep of the head snaps shut on a fish. More than a hundred sharp teeth interlock like a closing zip, perfect for holding something slippery. Grown males carry a hollow lump on the tip of the snout called a ghara, after the Indian clay pot it resembles, and they use it to buzz and hiss at other gharials. Females come ashore in spring to dig nests in warm sandbanks, laying dozens of eggs and guarding them until the young call from under the sand. Only a few hundred adults are left, most of them in protected rivers such as the Chambal. Dams, sand mining and fishing nets have taken away the deep water and clean sandbanks the gharial needs.
Find it on the globe
Gharial is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Why is its snout so thin?
A narrow snout slips through water with hardly any drag, so the gharial can swing its head fast enough to catch a darting fish. A broad, heavy snout would push far too much water aside.
Is a gharial dangerous to people?
It is not a man-eater. Its jaws and needle teeth are made for slippery fish, not for large prey, and it slides away when people come near. A big animal guarding a nest is still best left alone.
What is the ghara for?
Only fully grown males have one. It sits over the nostrils and turns a hiss into a loud buzz that carries across the river, and it shows females and rival males that this animal is an adult.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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