GAYIALS 
INDIAN GAVIAL 
The greenish-brown Indian gavial or gharial is the giant among present- 
day crocodilians. A specimen in the British Museum measures thirty feet, 
while live individuals of twenty feet are common. Yet despite its size and 
strength the gavial is harmless to man, as its long, slender snout, especially 
suited to fish-catching, is not adapted for attacking the larger mammals. 
According to reliable authorities, the human ornaments found in the 
stomachs of dead gavials prove nothing. These ornaments, it is said, were 
eaten along with Hindu corpses which the gavials had unearthed. The 
gharial has, however, been known to eat birds and small mammals such 
as young goats and small dogs. 
This immense reptile inhabits the rivers of British India. Here, sharing 
the habitat of other crocodilians, it lies for hours under water, with only 
its eyes and the nostril tips protruding. It catches fishes by a rapid sidewise 
snap of its snout and then passes them head first down the mouth, in a 
series of jerks. In winter months it spends most of its time basking in the 
sun on sandbanks, but takes to the water as the sun goes down. During 
the rains it leaves the flooded main rivers and migrates to smaller streams. 
Indian washerwomen pray to the gavials to keep away evil spirits. 
This species is the sole survivor of a large family of reptiles residing 
in India in prehistoric times. Pliocene fossils show a related species fifty 
to sixty feet long. 
The gavial is equipped with twenty-one or twenty-two rows of sharp 
transverse scutes or scales. Its long cylindrical jaws contain twenty-seven to 
twenty-nine upper teeth and twenty-five or twenty-six lower teeth on each 
side. The teeth are conical and hollow, considered better suited to snatching 
fishes than to crushing big game. 
Gavials lay their eggs in sandbanks to be hatched by the sun. Two 
rows of twenty eggs are laid, separated by one foot of sand. The young 
appear in March. Paler in color than their elders, they are about sixteen 
inches in length, nine inches of which consists of emaciated tail. 
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