How salties and gharials are similar yet different

Salties are ambush predators, content to wait till a meal comes their way before sneaking up to it underwater. They have been known to swipe rhesus macaques off low overhanging branches with their powerful tails. They are not fussy eaters: anything from birds and fish to pythons, deer and even tigers will do. But they’re not gluttons and can go for long periods without a meal.

Until the 1970s, salties were hunted almost en masse for their skin (considered the finest) — and for meat, until protection was accorded in 1996. Needless to say, poaching goes on. Worse, there have been calls — in India — to demote them from Z-class security (they are on Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972) that they currently enjoy.

Though bigger and wider than their cousins, salties have less thick-armour plating; their snouts are broader and only their lower teeth are visible when their mouths are closed (as is the reverse for the other crocs). They are powerful and canny swimmers and get across vast distances in the oceans by shrewdly using the currents or simply floating, thus saving energy. They may cruise at three to five kmph but, at full lick, can hit nearly 30 kmph within short periods.

Nests built on the banks of waterbodies and eggs (between 40 and 60) are fiercely guarded by the mother, though most baby crocs don’t make it. Siblings fight fiercely among themselves. Saltwater crocs may live for more than 70 years, even to 100-plus.

Of all the three crocodilian species found in India, the gharial has certainly been in the deepest water! Back in 1946, there were thought to be 5,000-10,000 gharials swimming in the rivers of India. Today, the figure ranges between 235 and 800 adults, living in just two per cent of their original range. This very long-snouted fish-eating croc is a fussy resident and needs clean and clear water. They are on IUCN’s Red List and Schedule I of our Wildlife Protection Act, and programmes have been undertaken for captive breeding and release into the wild.

According to a report, at the start, apparently gharial eggs had to be imported from Nepal (at Rs 200 an egg) and a male flown in from Germany to get things going! Though the captive breeding programme was deemed successful (the National Chambal Sanctuary is their main stronghold today), and several thousand adolescent gharial (1 m or more in length) were released into the rivers, the follow-up has been weak — and the numbers still seem precariously low. The rivers, alas, continue to be filthy.

Gharials may grow to 6.35 m and tip the scales at over 975 kg and are armed with around 110 sharply spiked teeth (but their bite is too weak to do us harm). One ancient grandparent was 20 m long! Males sport a earthen pot (ghara in Hindi) like growth on the tip of their snouts, which the ladies like and which is thought to be used as an echo chamber for the love serenades of the dudes in the mating season.

Some believe that the gharial is the vahana (a deity’s mount/vehicle) of the Ganga, or that of the god of water, Varuna. Others believe that jewels have been recovered from the stomachs of gharials indicating something more sinister. Well, people do drown and sometimes bodies do float away in rivers, and the gharials may go in for a change in diet… Wouldn’t you?