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Gharial

Gavialis gangeticus · hard

A gharial's snout is unmistakable: extraordinarily long, narrow and lined with over a hundred interlocking needle-like teeth. It is a specialist shape for a specialist diet. The thin jaw meets little resistance sweeping sideways through water, which lets the animal catch fish with a fast lateral snap. It is not built for the grip-and-twist feeding of other crocodilians, and gharials are no threat to people.

Mature males grow a bulbous cartilaginous knob on the snout tip, called a ghara after the Hindi word for an earthen pot. It resonates their calls into a distinctive buzz and is visible to females at a distance.

The body is adapted for water at the expense of land. Gharial legs are comparatively weak, and adults cannot raise themselves to walk in the way other crocodilians do; they push themselves along on their bellies and spend nearly all their time in deep, fast river channels, hauling out onto sandbanks to bask and nest.

That dependence has been ruinous. Dams, barrages, irrigation withdrawal and sand mining have removed the deep water and the exposed sandbanks the species needs. It survives in a small number of river stretches, principally in northern India and Nepal.

Where it lives

Worml lists the gharial as native to 4 countries — Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Its habitat is deep, fast river channels and sandbanks.

Ranges here are reduced to whole countries for playability and exclude introduced populations — see about the data for what that simplification leaves out.

In the game

Gharial is rated hard. To solve the round you need to find any 2 of its 4 listed countries. How scoring works →

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